Friday Briefing: Trump Orders New Global Tariffs

Trump ordered tariffs that could upend global trade

President Trump yesterday ordered his advisers to calculate new “reciprocal” tariffs that would affect nearly every country around the world. India, Japan and the E.U. could be the hardest hit.

The new tariffs, which could go into effect on or after April 2, would be calculated by taking into account tariffs other countries place on goods from the U.S. as well as other taxes, subsidies given to their own industries and other practices Trump deems unfair. He made clear that his ultimate goal was to force companies to bring manufacturing back to the U.S.

“If you build here, you’ll have no tariffs whatsoever,” Trump said at the Oval Office.

The order came just hours before Trump was to meet at the White House with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, whose country charges the kind of higher levies on U.S. imports that Trump has found problematic. The leaders are scheduled to hold a news conference, and we will have live updates here.

Context: For decades, U.S. tariff levels have been decided in negotiations at international bodies like the World Trade Organization. Trump wants to effectively scrap that system in favor of one determined solely by U.S. officials and based on their own criteria.

Quotable: “These tariff proposals amount to a declaration of an all-out trade war against practically all major U.S. trading partners,” said Eswar Prasad, a trade policy professor at Cornell University. “It is stunning and disappointing to see the country that had been the leading proponent of free trade now engaged in a direct assault on the rules and principles underlying that system.”

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