Donald Trump’s Rose Garden “Liberation Day” moment was a set piece event for the ages – an historic day he believes will kickstart a gradual American revival.
But at what immediate cost for the American people and countries globally?
And was it all a deceptive con?
Trump latest: Tariffs a ‘major blow to world economy’
It was, for sure, an expert-defying exercise in Trumponomics.
For decades, the president said, the US “has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike”.
He relished in the big reveal – giant charts in which the global interdependent economic ecosystem, built over decades, was simplified into two columns and a set of percentages.
In the first column, the tariffs Trump says are charged to America, calculated by undisclosed and very questionable White House arithmetic.
And in the next column, what Trump’s America will now levy.
He relished in what he saw in front of him. It felt like he was seeing some of the numbers for the first time.
“China, first row…” he said. “European Union, they’re very tough… Vietnam… Taiwan… Japan… India, very very tough… Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia – ooh look at Cambodia, look, at 97%!” he said.
His commerce secretary, next to him, smiled with delight.
Some of the world’s poorest countries – with their own barriers in place surely only to protect their fledgling economies – will be hit so hard having already been crippled by the USAID cuts.
Beyond the Trumponomics though, there was also a distinct air of deception about it all.
Precisely how had his team calculated their numbers?
Take South Korea, with which the US has a trade agreement. It is not charging a 50% tariff on US exports as Trump’s charts claim. Is the EU really charging America a 39% tariff? No.
Team Trump’s maths adds undisclosed “currency manipulation” calculations and non-tariff barriers (of which the EU has many, to be fair) to the calculations.
But the numbers and the arithmetic are still hard to explain.
Read more:
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‘Liberation Day’ explained
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A diamond industry in Pennsylvania
Take the tiny African nation of Lesotho (the place Trump recently said he’d never heard of).
It’s been hit with the top rate of 50% tariffs based on a wild claim that it levies the US at 99%.
In fact, it’s part of a southern African trade pact with other nations which have been levied at lower levels.
Lesotho’s textile industry is heavily reliant on US exports. It’s a country where 56.2% of the population lives on less than $3.65 a day, according to the World Bank.
You don’t need to ‘do the maths’ to see the impact.
Nearly half of Lesotho’s exports are diamonds. Trump’s driver for all this is to bring manufacturing back home.
Is his sledgehammer on Lesotho going to conjure up a diamond industry in Pennsylvania?
The same principle could be applied elsewhere, like Indonesia and coffee. How’s the coffee growing trade in America?
You get the idea.
The White House arithmetic seems to be based simply on trade deficit calculations which themselves are the consequence of supply and demand.
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“China, first row …”
China is another focus.
The Trump announcement will mean a 34% levy added to the 20% already in place.
So Chinese goods will cost Americans more than 50% more, assuming the price is passed onto the customer.
The impact within China will be huge too.
A ‘special relationship’
On a day which was, for the world beyond Trump’s America, bad all round, it was for the UK – in the end – as good as it could be.
The baseline 10% tariff for Britain is being seen as encouraging by Downing Street.
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The British government believes it’s ahead of most of the world in its negotiations for a deal to eliminate tariffs.
Over the past few weeks, it’s already offered proposals to placate Donald Trump.
The hope was that it would yield results before today.
Now they will negotiate hard and fast to chip away at the 10%.
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The ‘special relationship’ will do some heavy lifting.
