Trump’s tariffs follow anger over trade imbalances and loss of manufacturing jobs

President Trump encapsulated the international trade system on Wednesday with blunt global tariffs, indicating that the United States faces a serious economic emergency due to trade imbalances with countries around the world.

Mr. Trump has expressed his views for decades, a sentiment that prompted him to preside over lost manufacturing jobs and widening the trade deficit. Although the United States has the largest and most powerful economy in the world, Mr. Trump and many of his supporters have long believed that the United States has been deprived of other countries, and tariffs are the answer to decades of correcting the correctiveness of their so-called unfair treatment that has been shut down factories, weakening communities and hurting workers.

“Every prediction of trade by our opponents over the past 30 years has proven completely wrong,” Mr. Trump said on Wednesday, noting the NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the tariffs he imposed during his first term. “We have been unable to do what we have been doing for the last 50 years.”

Since working as a real estate developer in the 1980s, Mr. Trump has been opposing trade and business practices in other countries that he believes are unfair. At that time, when Japan was a thriving economic rival, Mr. Trump had attacked its tactics.

“If you go to Japan now and try to sell things, forget it, forget it, forget it.

This week, he went to great lengths to force more companies to produce their products in the United States. Despite the anxiety of economists, investors and businesses, his attitude could soar prices and put the economy into recession, he punished trading partners with serious tariffs.

Mr. Trump imposed 10% tariffs on all U.S. trading partners except Canada and Mexico, which went into effect on Saturday morning. He also imposed additional tariffs on dozens of countries including Japan and the EU, including Japan, and dozens of countries on the island of Taiwan, which will take effect on April 9. The most penalized tax is targeted at China, which will face Mr. Trump earlier this year and his 34% tax rate during his first administration. As a result, some Chinese products entering the U.S. may face 79% tariffs.

According to Yale University’s Budget Laboratory, the average valid U.S. U.S. tariff rate will rank in the top 22%, higher than 11% before the announcement of new tariffs. The new rate is the highest since 1909. Tariff rates are higher than the rates some countries charge to the U.S., but the Trump administration is using calculations that include non-monetary trade barriers and other calculations called “cheating.”

Mr. Trump was able to impose tariffs by specifying the U.S. trade deficit (the gap between U.S. imports and imports). The President did this by using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, which gave him the right to unilaterally impose tariffs.

“Chronic trade deficits are no longer just an economic problem, they are national emergencies that threaten our security and lifestyle,” Trump said.

The dynamics described by Mr. Trump have caused many American workers to lose their jobs due to cheaper overseas labor. Even some business groups representing industries damaged by other countries have expressed hope that the measures will ultimately help open markets for U.S. export restrictions.

“Obviously, we have concerns,” said Kenneth Hartman Jr., president of the National Corn Growers Association. “However, it is also hoped that the Trump administration can have some negotiations to open these markets in Asia such as Vietnam, India and the Philippines.”

But while people recognize that the U.S. industry is not treated fairly well in many cases, the concept of crisis is another matter. Many economists and legal experts believe that the idea of ​​an emergency has been concocted to prove Mr. Trump’s willingness to impose a large amount of import duties without regard to Congress’ approval or international trade rules.

Using this presidential power in this way was never employed before this year. In February, Mr. Trump declared that fentanyl and illegal immigration smuggling from Mexico and Canada were a national emergency for a justification for tariffs in these countries. Defining a trade deficit in this way is considered more suspicious, as most economists regard the trade deficit as a normal function of the economy.

The fact that when Trump took office in January, the U.S. economy outperformed the rest of the world could also undermine the U.S. theory of threats. In mid-January, the IMF raised its growth outlook for the United States to 2.7% this year, while forecasting weaker growth prospects in Europe and China.

“The economy is in good shape based on any macroeconomic indicator,” said Jonas Nahm, a professor at Johns Hopkins University and a former industrial policy economist in the Biden administration. “The only way to justify an emergency is to focus on the trade deficit in a way that reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how payment balance is.”

Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics at the Cato Institute, said it was calling the trade deficit a national emergency “beyond”. He suggested that legal challenges to tariffs could focus on the definition of emergencies and whether the president has the right to use global tariffs as a solution. The fact that the White House has not provided an analysis to show how it determines its so-called “reciprocal” tariff rates for dozens of countries also raises questions.

“Economic, almost everyone has come to the conclusion quickly and the numbers have just been made up,” said a trade lawyer. “I would be stunned if there were no legal challenges.”

Industry groups have been considering litigation to block Mr. Trump’s tariffs, but so far, businesses have not filed lawsuits.

However, there has been an effort to address legal challenges. Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University, is working with the nonprofit Free Justice Center to find potential clients in litigation. He said the potential clients would be a business that was forced to pay new tariffs to import taxes and he was optimistic about the potential of the case.

“The regulation can only apply to emergencies and extraordinary security threats, and none of them exist,” Thorin said. “It is not clear that the regulation even authorizes the use of large-scale tariffs.”

When lawyers debate whether the U.S. is facing an economic emergency, the trade war his tariffs are ready to ignite may eventually create a trade war.

After the tariffs were announced, economists warned that they could slow U.S. growth and raise prices and weigh the possibility that they could lead to a recession.

“Donald Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs will restore growth in advanced economies,” Jeremy Leonard, managing director of the Oxford Economics Global Industry Services Agency, wrote in a study.

But as stock markets plummeted Thursday, fearing possible disruptions from tariffs, the Trump administration and its supporters insisted that the turmoil would ultimately be worth it for American workers.

Vice President JD Vance argued in an interview with Fox News on Thursday that the U.S. was unable to borrow money from China just to buy cheap products and to get American factory shutters.

“We’ve gone this path for 40 years,” Vance said. “Yes, it’s a big change – I won’t shy away from it – but we need a big change.”