The president launched a new chapter in U.S. trade, imposing a 10 percent universal
tariff on trading partners and higher reciprocal levies on some.

TheEpochTimes.com

Just 72 days after taking office, President Donald Trump announced on April 2 sweeping trade policy changes, introducing what he called “reciprocal tariffs” for all countries and declaring it “Liberation Day in America.”

For decades, the United States has kept low trade barriers, promoting free trade agreements with minimal or zero tariffs—at least on its part. Those days are now over.

​​At a White House event, Trump presented a large chart outlining baseline and reciprocal tariff rates trading partners now face in attempts to balance their high trade barriers against U.S. goods. The rates include a flat 10 percent levy, along with additional rates tailored to match each nation’s trade barriers on America.

WorldNetDaily.com

President Donald Trump calls tariff "the most beautiful word in the dictionary." This refutes the orthodoxy of unilateral free trade championed for hundreds of years beginning with the 1776 "Wealth of Nations" author Adam Smith, widely known as the father of modern economics.

But economist Donald J. Boudreaux of the American Institute for Economic Research and former economics department chair at George Mason University writes Smith offered four exceptions to the principle of unilateral free trade: "These exceptions are, in the order in which Smith took them up, protective tariffs for purposes of (1) national security; (2) ensuring that imports are taxed by the home government no less than the home government taxes domestically produced goods and services that compete with imports; (3) pressuring foreign governments to reduce their tariffs; and (4) ensuring that workers in protected industries are not all hit suddenly and unexpectedly with the need to find new jobs."