In the wake of President Donald Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs, nations across the globe are preparing retailiatory actions.
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My fellow Americans, this is Liberation Day, waiting for a long time
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Liberation Day marked the launch of sweeping tariff policies that will reshape global trade
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The day has come and gone, but the aftermath is leaving nations scrambling and economists
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warning of chaos. April 2nd, 2025 will forever be remembered as the day American industry was
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reborn, the day America's destiny was reclaimed, and the day that we began to make America wealthy
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again. I think a better name for this day would be Watch Your Wallet Day, and I think Americans
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better start watching their wallets right away. I'm Mary Lovely. I'm an international trade
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economist. I am a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. I believe
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There's going to be a lot of chaos around this, especially because at the same time
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they revoked the so-called de minimis provision, which allowed packages under $800 to come in
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without the real fancy kind of customs treatment. President Donald Trump's latest tariff campaign received a quick rebuke from nations on the
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receiving end of those penalties. As U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick made the media rounds
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Thursday morning, he pointed out the latest tariffs are a jumping off point for the greatest
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dealmaker in the world. We're talking with all of the major countries of the world, and we've been
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talking to them for more than a month. This is this has been coming. We've said it's been coming
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The key is, will they take our agricultural products? Will they treat us fairly? Can they
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treat us fairly And the answer is over time that is going to be yes I think for me the greatest thing for me is that Donald Trump is sitting behind the Resolute desk in the Oval Office and he is the greatest dealmaker and he will decide how he wants to play his hand
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Japanese Trade Minister Yoji Muto said he will urge the U.S. to exempt Japan from these tariffs
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Japan faces 24 percent tariffs in Liberation Day's wake. I think that countries are trying to figure out what Trump would want in a deal for these to reduce these tariffs
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But we have to realize that if he does, that goes against two of his stated objectives, which is one, to reshore activity to the United States
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He's definitely been way out front promising Americans that. And if he rolls back the tariffs, well, doesn't that cancel that out
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That's the incentive right there. And secondly, he doesn't get the tariff revenue that he needs to not explode the budget deficit
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I worry about, you know, what kind of deals other countries hope to hope to cut with the trade team
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Will these be transparent? How do they relate to U.S. law? One of the problems with arbitrary trade policy is that there is a lot of room for, if not the actual corruption, for the appearance of corruption
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And the belief by foreigners that the U.S. trade policy, commercial policy, no longer operates according to law
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Mary Lovely also cast doubt on countries following through with their deals. Are they worth the paper that they're written on
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We didn't see China really following through. Part of that was the pandemic. It was problems that Boeing had for idiosyncratic reasons, because, you know, in China, buy some aircraft
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That a big number But overall what is sustained power sustainability of these personalized types of promises While the negotiating door certainly opened to the president behind the art of the deal some nations are immediately choosing a retaliatory path China which faces
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a 34% tariff on top of an existing 20% rate, called on the U.S. to immediately lift its
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unilateral tariff measures and properly resolve differences with trading partners through equal
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dialogue. The EU is also vowing to react. President Trump's announcement of universal
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tariffs on the whole world, including the European Union, is a major blow to the world economy
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At the same time, we are prepared to respond. We are already finalizing the first package of
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countermeasures in response to tariffs on steel. And we're now preparing for further countermeasures
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to protect our interests and our businesses if negotiations fail. So this is a different opponent, right
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This is a very large economy with a complicated political economy, right
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They have the member states. Trade policy is an EU competency, means that it's set for the whole membership
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Their tariff rates are tied to the EU overall. The EU has been a fairly steadfast advocate of the World Trade Organization
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This is a major change for them to just lower rates on the United States, violate some of the main tenants of the World Trade Organization
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You don't discriminate among your among the members. I think it's going to be very hard for them just to say I'm going to make a lot of purchases
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The EU may be in a unique spot, but their response is not unique
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We're going to fight these tariffs with countermeasures. We are going to protect our workers And we are going to build the strongest economy in the G7 Retaliation is a huge risk I
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think we're seeing a lot of countries choosing depending on their own political economy. So for
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example, in Canada, with an election coming, we've seen Mark Carney say that he will respond
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Other countries are saying, well, that's not perhaps in our own interest
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Overall, it's going to depend, again, on what is the election cycle
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How do people feel about their leaders, their country being, in a sense, bullied by the United States
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Do they demand action? Would they like to see the government be more conciliatory because there's a lot at risk
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If the tariff rates stand, Lovely says this will kick off a global trade war that will be much different from Trump's first term
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They say the last time that they did this, you know, we didn't see a gigantic spike in the CPI
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We didn't see the economy slowing. I think we're at a very different place in the business cycle this time
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Going after all of our trading partners is very different because, among other reasons, China was able to reroute
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Other countries were able to partly, not entirely, partly with the help of Chinese investment into their manufacturing sector, were able to provide untaxed substitutes
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And that basically made the burden on Americans smaller. Here, it's very difficult to see what this complicated web of tariffs is leading to in terms of how multinationals will rearrange their supply chains
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However that sorts out on a global scale, Lovely predicts Americans will see those price spikes in time for back-to-school shopping
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For SIN, I'm Simone Del Rosario
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