Donald Trump Details Plans for ‘Reciprocal Trade Act’ to Level Tariffs

Former President Donald Trump unveiled a plan during a speech in Columbus, Georgia, to tariff and tax products from other nations at the same rate American goods are charged.

Speaking on Saturday at what was his first public appearance after being indicted on 37 federal counts relating to documents he took to Mar-a-Lago at the end of his presidency, Trump laid out his vision for a “reciprocal” trade and tariff policy:

To save our economy from Joe Biden’s inflation catastrophe and economic disaster, I will deliver tax cuts, energy price cuts, and interest rates cuts – the likes of which you have never seen before, except in the Trump administration, actually. We will pass the Trump Reciprocal Trade Act, which means if a foreign country charges tariffs or taxes on our products, we will charge their products at the exact same rate. It’s called “an eye for an eye.” 

Trump said, “India is very high on tariffs, and China is unbelievably high. Brazil is high. A lot of them are high.” He then asserted such a move would bring in 12-figure sums. 

“Now what will happen – a lot of them will just drop it, and if they don’t, that’s okay, too, because we’ll charge them the same thing. We’ll take in billions and billions and hundreds of billions of dollars,” he said.

As president, Trump imposed billions of dollars of tariffs on China, which led to a U.S. manufacturing boom. On Saturday, he pledged “to gain total independence from China.”

He said:

It’ll make a difference like you wouldn’t believe, and it’ll also bring back a lot of money into our country and a lot of jobs back into our country. But we’ll also probably be putting a border tax, you know. These countries come in to raid our country. They steal our country. They’re stealing it.

Trump also floated aspirations to export American vehicles to Germany, noting that while German-manufactured cars are common in America, the opposite is not true.

If you look at Germany with their cars, they don’t take our cars; we take their cars. And I did a lot of changes, but we have to do something. … I asked Angela Merkel, “Angela, how many Chevrolets do you have in the middle of Berlin?” [She said,] “Why, believe nothing.” I said, “You’re right. You have nothing.” How many Mercedes Benz and BMWs do we have? It’s like you can’t even see without seeing them all over our highways. They’re very good cars. But you know what? They’ve got to be fair, and they’re not fair because they think we’re stupid. That’s the only reason. They think we’re so stupid. Our leaders have been stupid for so many years. 

Another area the 45th president zoned in on was the national debt, suggesting embracing America’s potential for energy dominance as a solution to combatting the nation’s fiscal problems:

We’re giving away our country. We have $36 trillion in debt. We can wipe out that debt by being smart and also by being energy dominant. We will make so much money. We’ll make so much money and sell it to countries that don’t have liquid gold under their feet. We have more liquid gold. I call it liquid gold because … it’s better than gold. We have more liquid gold under our feet than any other country in the world. Nobody knows that. 

Speaking in Greensboro, North Carolina, later in the evening – his second speech of the day, lasting more than an hour – Trump asserted, “There’s no issue where a spine of steel is more important than when it comes to rescuing America from a really bad Biden economy.”