Washington (AP) – President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday new major prices on almost all American trade partners – a 34% tax on imports from China and 20% on the European Union, among others – which threatens to dismantle a large part of the architecture of the global economy and to trigger larger trade wars.
Look at Trump’s comments in the player above.
Trump, in an announcement by Rose Garden, said that he placed high prices rates on dozens of nations that made significant trade surpluses with the United States, while imposing a 10% basic tax on imports from all countries in response to what he called an economic emergency.
The president, who said that the prices have been designed to stimulate national manufacturing, used aggressive rhetoric to describe a global trade system that the United States helped build after the Second World War, saying that “our country was looted, looted, raped and looted” by other nations.
The action is equivalent to a historic tax increase which could push the world order to a point of rupture. He explains what could be a painful transition for many Americans, because the essential elements of the middle class such as housing, cars and clothing should become more expensive, while disturbing the alliances constructed to ensure peace and economic stability.
WATCH: Examine Trump’s claims that prices will revitalize American manufacturing
Trump said he was acting to bring hundreds of billions of new revenues to the United States government and restore world trade equity.
“Taxpayers have been scammed for over 50 years,” he said. “But it will not happen anymore.”
Trump has declared a national economic urgency to collect the prices. He promised that factory jobs will return to the United States as a result of taxes, but its policies risk suddenly economic slowdown because consumers and businesses could face high prices.
Trump held a key campaign promise because he imposed what he called the “reciprocal” prices on trading partners, acting without congress under the 1977 law on emergency powers. But his action on Wednesday could compromise the mandate of Trump voters in last year’s elections to combat inflation. Several Republican senators, in particular farm and borders states, have questioned the wisdom of the prices. The term contracts on the US stock market have sold strongly overnight in anticipation of the economy, after having already dropped since the start of this year.
President Donald Trump has a decree signed on prices, in the Garden Rose of the White House in Washington, DC, April 2, 2025. Photo of Leah Millis / Reuters
“With today’s announcement, the American prices tackle the levels that are not seen since the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which prompted a World War of Trade and in-depth the Great Depression,” said Scott Lincicome and Colin Grabow of the Cato Institute, a libertarian thinking group.
The higher prices of the president would reach foreign entities that sell more goods in the United States than they buy, which means that the prices could remain in place for a while because the administration expects other nations to drop their prices and other obstacles to trade which, according to him, led to a commercial imbalance of $ 1.2 billion of dollars last year.
The new rates go in addition to recent announcements of 25% taxes on automotive imports; samples against China, Canada and Mexico; and expanded commercial penalties on steel and aluminum. Trump has also imposed prices on countries importing from Venezuela oil and plans to separate import taxes on pharmaceutical drugs, wood, copper and computer flea.
Canada and Mexico would not face higher rates on what they are already charged by Trump in what it says is an effort to stop illegal immigration and drug addict. Currently, goods in accordance with the North American commercial pact of the USMCA would be excluded from these prices.
But the 20% billed on imports from China because of its role in the production of fentanyl would be largely added to the 34% announced by Trump. The specific products that Trump Tariff, such as cars, would be exempt from prices unveiled on Wednesday, as are products such as pharmaceutical drugs that it provides for a rate on a later date.
Reaction threats
None of the warning signs on a fall in the stock market or a feeling of transformation consumption, the gloom has only publicly guess its strategy, despite the risk of political reaction.
High administration officials, who insisted on anonymity to preview new prices with journalists before Trump’s speech, said taxes would increase hundreds of billions of dollars a year in income. They said that the 10% reference rate existed to help guarantee compliance, while higher rates were based on trade deficits with other nations, and then divided by two to the figures that Trump presented in Rose Garden.
The rate of 10% would be collected from Saturday and higher rates would be collected from April 9.
Trump has deleted pricing exemptions on imports from China worth $ 800 or less. He plans to remove the exemptions that other nations have on imports worth $ 800 or less once the federal government certifies who has the staff and the resources in place.
Based on the possibility of general prices that have been launched by certain white house aid, most external analyzes by banks and reflections see a tarnished economy by higher prices and stagnating growth.
Trump would apply these prices by himself; He has ways to do so without the approval of the congress. This allows Democratic legislators and decision -makers to criticize the administration if the uncertainty expressed by companies and the decline in consumers’ feeling are signs of future problems.
WATCH: Companies are preparing for Trump’s new prices while Senate Democrats are trying to push
Representative Suzan Delbene, D-Wash., Said the prices were “part of chaos and dysfunction” generated through the Trump administration. The president of the campaign committee of the Democratic Congress stressed that Trump should not have the sole power to increase taxes, because he intends to obtain the approval of the legislators, saying that the Republicans so far have been “faithful blindness”.
“The president should not be able to do so,” said Delbene. “This is an increase in massive tax on American families, and it is without vote in the congress. … President Trump promised on the campaign track that he would reduce costs on the first day. He now says that he does not care that prices increase – he has broken his promise.”
Even the Republicans who trust Trump’s instincts have recognized that prices could disrupt an economy with an unemployment rate that is in good health of 4.1%.
“We will see how it all develops,” said Chamber Mike Johnson, R-La. “It can be difficult at first. But I think it will make sense to Americans and help all Americans. ”
Allies accumulate themselves
Longtime business partners are preparing their own countermeasures. Canada has imposed some in response to the prices that Trump has linked to fentanyl traffic. The European Union, in response to steel and aluminum prices, has put taxes on 26 billion euros ($ 28 billion) of American goods, including Bourbon, which prompted Trump to threaten a 200% rate on European alcohol.
Many allies believe they have been reluctantly trained in a confrontation of Trump, who regularly says that American friends and enemies have essentially snatched the United States with a mixture of prices and other trade barriers.
The back of the medal is that the Americans also have income to choose to buy creative dresses by French fashion houses and German manufacturers’ cars, while the World Bank data show that the EU has lower income per capita than the United States
The Chinese government has delivered a measured response to the new prices, affirming in a press release: “China believes that protectionism does not lead anywhere, and trade and tariff wars have no winners. This has been widely recognized in the international community. ”
The first first Italian curator, Giorgia Meloni, said that Trump’s new prices against the EU were “wrong” and that Italy would work with an agreement with the United States to avoid a trade war that would weaken all those involved.
The CEO of Basic Fun Jay Foreman, whose company is behind conventional toys such as Tonka Trucks, Lincoln Logs and Care Bears, worked hard to find new ways to reduce costs related to prices such as reducing packaging and eliminating batteries with products.
But Trump’s announcement that he provides for a 34% increase in prices on Chinese imports solidified his decision to increase prices. Most of the company’s toys are made in China. He said the Tonka Mighty Benne Truck truck would drop from $ 29.99 to $ 39.99 this holiday season, maybe even $ 45.
“There is no other way,” he said.
The writers of the Associated Press Anne d’Annocenzio in New York, Sylvie Corbet in Paris and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.