- President Trump announced a 10% baseline tariff on all imports and higher reciprocal tariffs on some countries.
- By ending a decades-long status quo, Trump said the tariffs would protect U.S. manufacturing from unfair trade.
- Utah businesses said the announcement creates uncertainty and could have unintended consequences for supply chains.
President Donald Trump announced Wednesday the most expansive tariff regime since the 1800s with a blanket 10% tariff on all foreign imports and rates of up to 50% on imports from countries with significant trade barriers.
The so-called “Liberation Day” proclamation marked the most significant shift in U.S. trade policy in decades. It also represented the fulfillment of campaign promises Trump has been making for nearly 10 years.
“This is one of the most important days, in my opinion, in American history,” Trump said during his remarks delivered in the White House’s Rose Garden. “It’s our declaration of economic independence.”
Trump told the crowd of union members, Cabinet officials and Republican lawmakers that his new protectionist policies would put an end to the global economic order established over half a century ago and would reverse the free trade status quo of the past 30 years that he said has “ripped off” U.S. workers.
In addition to a baseline 10% tariff that includes more than 100 foreign trade partners, Trump unveiled what he called “kind” or “discounted” reciprocal tariffs that will be equal to half of a country’s trade barriers toward the U.S. as calculated by the administration.
These individualized higher tariffs will apply to the countries with which the U.S. has the highest trade deficits, or the greatest difference between how much the U.S. buys from a trade partner and how much the trade partner buys from the U.S.
“They do it to us, we do it to them, very simple,” Trump said.
Here are some of the tariffs that could have the biggest impacts on Americans, along with the corresponding trade barrier determined by the administration:
- China
- Chinese trade barriers against U.S.: 67%
- New U.S. tariff rate against China: 34%
- European Union
- European trade barriers against U.S.: 39%
- New U.S. tariff rate against the E.U.: 20%
- India
- Indian trade barriers against U.S.: 52%
- New U.S. tariff rate against India: 26%
- Japan
- Japanese trade barriers against U.S.: 46%
- New U.S. tariff rate against Japan: 24%
- Vietnam
- Vietnamese trade barriers against U.S.: 90%
- New U.S. tariff rate against Vietnam: 46%
The 10% tariff on all countries will take effect on Saturday, the White House said in a statement. The reciprocal higher tariffs will take effect on April 9.
“It’s very upsetting when you see what people have been doing to us for 30 years,” Trump said. “This all happened with no response from the United States of America, none whatsoever. But those days are over.”
What other tariffs have been implemented?
The United States’ top two trade partners, Canada and Mexico, do not appear on the list. The two countries were the subject of Trump’s first tariff announcement on day one of his second term.
Wednesday’s sweeping changes to U.S. trade policy come after a series of targeted tariffs that include: 25% on Canadian and Mexican goods not protected by a 2020 trade deal, an additional 10% on all Chinese goods, 25% on all steel and aluminum imports and 25% on cars and car parts, with partial exceptions for automobiles that fall under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
Trump has also threatened industry-specific tariffs on copper, dairy, computer chips, lumber, oil, energy, alcohol and medicine.
Most economists predict that expanded tariffs will negatively impact Americans by increasing costs for manufacturers and raising the price of goods for consumers.
The 10% blanket tariff alone constitutes at least a $330 billion tax hike, if applied to the total of goods imported in 2024, to be spread between foreign businesses, domestic corporations and consumers, likely resulting in an average loss of thousands of dollars per household, according to the Yale Budget Lab.
Michael Strain, the director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, said while reciprocal tariffs might appear like they are leveling the playing field, they will likely just hurt American manufacturers and businesses who are responsible for about half of foreign imports.
“A trade barrier in another nation makes it harder for American exporters; it’s not clear to me why the appropriate remedy for that is to impose a large tax on working class households and to increase the costs of domestic manufacturers doing business,” Strain told the Deseret News.
But for Trump-aligned intellectuals, such responses are out of step with American history, which saw large tariffs levied on other nations from 1816 until the end of World War II.
Jeff Ferry, the chief economist emeritus at the Coalition for a Prosperous America, acknowledged that prices are likely to temporarily rise in specific industries but he said these fluctuations in the market are small compared to the positive shifts that will take place across the economy by incentivizing more manufacturing in America.
“Tariffs played a large role in our economic growth and our success, and specifically in our industrial revolution,” Ferry said. “But tariffs should be targeted towards the industries that we want to see grow, and that’s how they should work.”
Utah companies respond
The immediate impact of Wednesday’s announcement on Utah businesses will be uncertainty, according to Ben Kolendar, the chief of staff at World Trade Center Utah, a nonprofit organization that helps Utah companies make international connections.
The organization’s tariff tracking dashboard includes 13 different executive orders that Trump has authorized since entering office. With so many changes, World Trade Center Utah is trying to help Utah companies navigate potentially overlapping tariffs and how they interact with recent purchases that have yet to enter the country, Kolendar said.
“It’s going to take some time to build out our supply chains,” Kolendar said. “And the reality is, we’re going to have to import goods for some time, even if they are more costly.”
The new global tariffs will have a painful effect on many Utah businesses even if they do not rely directly on imports, according to Kim Honeysett, the chief legal officer at Varex Imaging, because U.S. suppliers of parts and raw materials are integrated into “multiple levels of supply chain that will be impacted.”
Varex, headquartered in Salt Lake City, is the only independent manufacturer of medical, industrial and security X-ray imaging technology in the U.S., employing around 1,200 people domestically, Honeysett said.
Nearly 70% of the company’s $800 million annual sales come from the export of products, Honeysett said. So in addition to the increased overhead costs Varex will have from tariffs on things like imported copper housings, there is also the threat of retaliatory tariffs hurting sales, Honeysett said.
While a delayed timeline could help give businesses time to pivot, Honeysett worries Trump’s new tariff policy could have the unintended consequence of pushing companies to leave the U.S. to avoid getting caught up in a trade war.
“Trump talked about bolstering the economy, bringing jobs back to the U.S., increasing manufacturing in the U.S. — one of the real challenges, I think, is it could have the opposite effect,” Honeysett said. “Increased costs associated with supply chain, increased costs to customers, could actually drive U.S. manufacturing overseas, taking American jobs with them.”
Before Wednesday’s announcement, China, Japan and South Korea, as a group, and Canada, Mexico and the European Union, individually, vowed to respond to Trump’s announcement with heightened tariffs.
China has already implemented new 15% duties on U.S. agricultural imports and Canada has announced 25% tariffs on $30 billion in American products.
Correction: An earlier version of this story listed the incorrect date when the reciprocal tariffs would take effect. They will take effect April 9.