TARIFF MAN
- Paul Hansbury
- Apr 10
- 8 min read
Updated: 7 days ago
Or maybe not. From the dizzying world of Donald Trump's White House, the president yesterday announced a 90-day reprieve on recently unveiled import tariffs. Only a couple of days earlier, the White House press office had labelled rumours of a pause on their implementation as 'fake news'. The president himself said: 'We are not looking at that.' To quote Jim Hacker, 'First rule of politics: never believe anything until it's officially denied.'
A week earlier, on 2 April, standing in the White House Rose Garden and holding up what could have been a bookmaker's board, Trump announced what he called 'reciprocal' tariffs against more than 180 countries. The punters, sat in rows on the windswept lawn, leaned forward, applauded and laughed as the president joked about it all.
The maths behind the numbers has been roundly ridiculed. There was a blanket 10% tariff, and then higher tariffs targeted at trade partners with whom the United States runs a trade deficit – irrespective of whether that trade partner is significant, as China, or insignificant, as are the unpopulated Heard and McDonald Islands (down near Antarctica, apparently). The tariffs were imposed on tiny island states and impoverished states in the global south. Because everyone knows that Fijians, Tuvaluans and Malawians only do all they can to rip off American workers. I'm joking.
Observers quickly noted that several long-standing US adversaries were omitted from the list. The lack of tariff for North Korea is explicable, given there is a de facto trade embargo, but the absence of Russia and Belarus far less so. Imports from allies in the European Union faced a 20% tariff, whilst there was an additional 34% tariff for imports from China (already subject to a 20% tariff from two earlier decisions).
The 10% tariff across the board remains in place. The additional levies are the ones subject to the 'pause' and trade with China has been excluded from it. Also excluded from the pause are specific measures such as the 25% tariff on imports of cars and car parts, and the 25% tariff on steel and aluminium announced on 9 February and which came into effect on 12 March.
Trump singled out China which he rightly sees as the main rival to the US. Trump imposed a 10% tariff on Chinese imports on 1 February, augmented it with a further 10% soon after. On 2 April Trump's tote board added a further 34%, which finally prompted retaliation from Beijing in the form of its own 34% tariff on US imports. This set in motion a spiral of escalation, with Trump announcing a further 50%, taking the tariff on Chinese imports to an eye-watering 104%. China mirrored this, too, taking its tariff to 84%. Trump upped the ante again lifting some goods tariffs to a whopping 125%.