Posted on 04/04/2025 5:01:09 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
Not long after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the administration’s economic staff went to work on a daunting task: determining tariff rates for dozens of countries to fulfill the president’s campaign pledge of imposing “reciprocal” trade barriers.
After weeks of work, aides from several government agencies produced a menu of options meant to account for a wide range of trading practices, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Instead, Trump personally selected a formula that was based on two simple variables — the trade deficit with each country and the total value of its U.S. exports, said two of the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to recount internal talks. While precisely who proposed that option remains unclear, it bears some striking similarities to a methodology published during Trump’s first administration by Peter Navarro, now the president’s hard-charging economic adviser. After its debut in the Rose Garden on Wednesday, the crude math drew mockery from economists as Trump’s new global trade war prompted a sharp drop in markets.
The president’s decision to impose tariffs on trillions of dollars of goods reflects two key factors animating his second term in office: his resolve to follow his own instincts even if it means bucking long-standing checks on the U.S. presidency, and his choice of a senior team that enables his defiance of those checks.
The process represented a stark departure from past administrations. The White House used emergency powers to implement the tariffs, allowing officials to speed through deliberations and limit input from corporations and foreign leaders.
After deliberations that went late into Tuesday, Trump didn’t decide on the final plan until about 1 p.m. Wednesday — less than three hours ahead of his Rose Garden announcement.
Inside and outside the White House, advisers say Trump is unbowed...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
“He’s at the peak of just not giving a f--- anymore,” said a White House official with knowledge of Trump’s thinking. “Bad news stories? Doesn’t give a f---. He’s going to do what he’s going to do. He’s going to do what he promised to do on the campaign trail.”
It took 5 little rat propagandists to write this trash.
The Demedia act as if Trump’s affinity for tariffs is something new. His first term success was driven in part by tariffs as well yet no one wants to acknowledge his success with the economy then. But with the Dims low approval ratings they are grasping at strawa trying to drive Trump’s approval ratings down. Give him some time and we’ll be back!
These people are demented.
No one has a firmer grasp of applied economics than the crack economists at the Washington Compost.
Whirlwind? This has been coming for quite some time if you bothered to listen to what the man was saying. See also initial steps with Canada and Mexico. Geez. You’re fooling no one WP gaslighter.
It’s not like he just did this on the spur of the moment
Yep trumps entire term he had tariffs on countries and our economy boomed
It wasn’t a whirlwind decision. He had thought about it for a long time. What Biden had done to the economy, it became imperative in many ways.
He was talking about it on Oprah in the 80’s. He did a full page ad in the NYTimes in the early 90’s.
I’d hardly call that “Whirlwind”.
Maybe. But the finest economic mind today is Paul Krugman at the New York Times.
“Whirlwind decision.”
Must be the world’s slowest whirlwind. One of the earliest documented instances of Donald Trump promoting tariffs was in 1987 when he published an open letter in The New York Times expressing frustration with foreign nations “ripping off” the United States through trade imbalances. He specifically criticized Japan and other countries for what he saw as unfair trade practices, laying the groundwork for his later tariff-focused policies.
A snail’s pace 38 year whirlwind.
John Maynard Keynes has given us the economy we have today. Anybody who follows Keynes is an idiot.
I think that I pretty well understand what Trump is attempting to do by adjusting the tariffs in order to level the playing field. The foreign country either drops the tariffs altogether or we will have an equivalent tariff imposed on any of their products. On the other hand what happens if a foreign government will subsidize their product, for example steel to make it cheaper than we can produce it locally. What would our reaction be? Will we be right back to another round of new tariffs? Just wondering.. thanks for any reasonable answer.
I did not think it was necessary to add the sarcasm tag....
Navarro definitely knows what time it is.
Had to be implemented immediately upon taking the presidential oath of office so It’s far enough away from the mid-terms to actually START to work and have a positive narrative to run on.
Trump has taken economies with the truth on this subject. The reciprocal tariff is not reciprocal to a tariff charged by a given country against the US goods imported there at all. Not at least in the case of an example country, South Korea. The reciprocal tariff Trump has used is a ratio of our imports to SK vs. their exports to us and that ratio is about 50%. Half of that is of course 25%.
SK’s actual tariff rates to the US are about 54% on agricultural goods and about 6.2% on all others.
From Office of US Trade Representative
https://ustr.gov/uskoreaFTA/key_facts
“Right now, South Korea’s tariffs on imported agricultural goods average 54 percent, compared to the average 9 percent levied by the United States on the same kinds of imports. South Korea’s average tariff on non-agricultural goods is more than twice that of the United States – 6.6 percent compared to our 3.2 percent.”
Trump has misrepresented and imposed a goal not related to reductions of tariffs on US goods.
Flame away, I don’t care and your notes will fall on deaf ears.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.