Yesterday President Donald J. Trump implemented a sweeping regime of reciprocal and baseline tariffs with all America’s trading partners. Or rather, with the countries who have willingly sold America many more goods and services than they have bought, and in the process racked up an untold amount of “receivables.” When a seller lets you rack up a high tab and never duns you, you must ask why. Donald Trump said America will stop running up the tab. That has “free trade” sophists of all stripes crying “Foul!” Now is another reason to ask why, and to rebut the most common free-trade arguments.
What Trump has done on tariffs
Yesterday Donald Trump proclaimed “Liberation Day” – liberation, that is, from going ever deeper into trade debt. He announced a ten-percent baseline tariff with all trading partners, beginning this Saturday (April 5). Furthermore, he imposed “reciprocal tariffs” on countries who charge greater than ten percent.
Not one country on earth, other than the United States today, charges less than a ten percent baseline tariff. To show this, Trump posted to Truth Social a four-part table, in image form, showing:
Tariffs charged to the USA, and
New baseline and “discounted reciprocal” tariffs the USA will now start charging.
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114270396482753269
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114270397111664712
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114270397827085442
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114270398531479278
Again, every country charges a baseline tariff of ten percent, at least. Israel, at the time Trump made his posters, charged a 33 percent total tariff. The highest tariffs are for sales into the former French Indochina, especially Cambodia, which charges the highest tariffs. The Trump tariffs are ten percent, or half the total tariff any given country charges, whichever is higher. (Trump will charge Canada the baseline tariff only, regardless of reciprocal tariffs. Already Doug Ford, Prime Minister of Ontario Province, announced his proposal to eliminate all tariffs on both sides. But he lacks the authority to promise that.)
Rollbacks, etc.
Before day’s end, several countries had already announced rollbacks of their tariffs, in direct response or anticipation. Israel specifically announced cancellation of any remaining tariffs on U.S. imports. India has already begun negotiating a new regime to reduce their current tariffs. Switzerland has now eliminated tariffs on 99 percent of U.S. goods.
But the U.S. Senate seems to have broken with the Trump administration regarding the charging of any tariffs to Canada. The Senate passed a resolution in opposition to the tariffs – and four Republicans joined all Democrats to support that resolution. They are Senators:
Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.),
Rand Paul (R-Ky.),
Susan Collins (R-Maine), and
Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) proposed the resolution, which no one expects to pass the House. Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) did not vote on the resolution; why he missed that vote is unclear.
McConnell, Collins, and Murkowski all have reputations as spiteful opponents of Trump and everything he does or stands for. But Rand Paul, unlike the other three, has some principled grounds for opposition, however misguided. Like all libertarians, he believes that tariffs are inherently inimical to human liberty. Furthermore, if one country imposes a tariff on another, it does nothing except to deny purchase opportunities to its own citizens, subjects, or lawful residents. Libertarians simply do not recognize any national economic or even strategic interest. “Unilateral economic disarmament” has always been the libertarian by-word regarding international trade.
Trump offers an explanation
In announcing his new tariffs, Trump offered an explanation that went back to the first century of American history. (Source: Fox News.) From the Inauguration of President George Washington to the first year of Woodrow Wilson, tariffs financed the federal government.
From 1789 to 1913, we were a tariff-backed nation. And the United States was proportionately the wealthiest it has ever been. So wealthy, in fact, that in the 1880s they established a commission to decide what they were going to do with the vast sums of money they were collecting. We were collecting so much money so fast, we didn’t know what to do with it. Isn’t that a nice problem to have?
But in 1910, a group of wealthy bankers met at Jekyll Island, which was the Martha’s Vineyard of its day. This claque invented the Federal Reserve Banking System. Since then, Americans have used debt, not precious metals, to settle their own debt. Also in that year, the States ratified (maybe) Amendment XVI – the income tax.
In his announcement, Trump expanded on his notion of “liberation” from a one-sided trade regime:
American steel workers, auto workers, farmers and skilled craftsmen – [of which] we have a lot … here with us today, [have] really suffered, gravely. They watched in anguish as foreign leaders have stolen our jobs, foreign cheaters have ransacked our factories, and foreign scavengers have torn apart our once-beautiful American dream. We had an American dream that you don't hear so much about. You did four years ago, and you are now. But you don't too often.
Now it’s our turn to prosper, and in so doing, use trillions and trillions of dollars to reduce our taxes and pay down our national debt. And it will all happen very quickly. With today’s action, we are finally going to be able to make America great again, greater than ever before. Jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country, and you see it happening already. We will supercharge our domestic industrial base.
Trump further explained how he calculates the total tariff burden. It includes not only direct monetary tariffs but also regulatory and other barriers to market entry.
For decades, the United States slashed trade barriers on other countries, while those nations placed massive tariffs on our products and created outrageous non-monetary barriers to decimate our industries. And in many cases, the non-monetary barriers were worse than the monetary ones. They manipulated their currencies, subsidized their exports, stole our intellectual property, imposed exorbitant taxes to disadvantage our products, adopted unfair rules and technical standards, and created filthy pollution havens.
That last touches on a supreme irony of the tariff debate. For decades, the same Democrats who now complain about the tariffs, complained about other countries’ inattention to the natural environment, as well as the slave wages most employers in these countries paid their labor force. “Filthy pollution havens” doesn’t half say it in many cases.
Finally Trump reminded everyone of the simple way to avoid tariffs: build manufacturing capacity in America. Elon Musk’s Tesla does just that: builds factories in, or close to, the markets into which they wish to sell.
The case for tariffs
Aside from Sen. Paul, Erick-Woods Erickson makes the typical case for “free trade.” He starts with the observation that the Standard and Poor’s 500 index lost nine percent of its valuation from late February to the present. That could reflect the beginnings of Trump’s aggressive trade policy – but Erickson does not substantiate that. Besides, Trump announced his new policies after the stock markets closed.
Then he asserts without warrant that:
A trade deficit is … not actually a bad thing, and more often than not, countries running trade deficits are those that are wealthier and healthier economically.
He cites Vietnam as an example. Labor and production costs in Vietnam are lower, he says, because the country is poor. So making things “over there” is cheaper. Therefore, all other things being equal, Americans might prefer to buy cheaper goods.
But many of those same Americans are out of jobs because someone is buying clothing and other goods from Vietnam. How are Americans supposed to be able to afford anything if they can’t work?
Nor is Vietnam the only example. In fact, America has a net trade deficit with all the rest of the world. An individual who “runs a trade deficit” with everyone else in the economy, is a spendthrift, or a deadbeat. If his surpluses with some do not balance his deficits with others, he is spending money. Such accounting applies equally to nation-states as to individuals. Any suggestion to the contrary, constitutes magical thinking – or a pack of lies.
Finally, if you doubt the existence of non-tariff barriers, the U.S. Trade Representative dropped an eleven-post thread explaining them.
https://x.com/USTradeRep/status/1907569779503689792
https://x.com/USTradeRep/status/1907569781764464834
https://x.com/USTradeRep/status/1907569783312155084
https://x.com/USTradeRep/status/1907569785074016595
https://x.com/USTradeRep/status/1907569786839617560
https://x.com/USTradeRep/status/1907569788404007154
https://x.com/USTradeRep/status/1907569789997908041
https://x.com/USTradeRep/status/1907569791633858606
https://x.com/USTradeRep/status/1907569793353351416
https://x.com/USTradeRep/status/1907569795085594845
https://x.com/USTradeRep/status/1907569796528365867
Rebuttals to the case against tariffs
Erickson tries in vain to make a case against the Trump policy. To begin with:
We are told an American business can now and should build a manufacturing base in the United States. However, these businesses do not know how long the tariffs will last, and, in the worst-case scenario, they could end in four years with a new president. So do you think they want to invest the capital in new factories with higher labor costs that won’t be finalized for more than four years in the United States when the tariffs could go away within four years?
What prospect have the Democrats to take back the White House in four years?
Never underestimate the predilections of the winning political party fixing the problems of the losing political party. Trump’s tariffs have given the Democrats an economic message that silences their cultural activists and elevates their economic pragmatists.
Oh, really? Last CNAV heard, their cultural activists are still screaming bloody murder. Susan Crawford won her Justicial election in Wisconsin by campaigning as The Abortion Justice. Democrats are still
the party of illegal aliens, … murderers[, violators of women,] and gang members in [law-abiding Americans’] communities.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas)
If Erick-Woods Erickson seriously expects the Democrats to stop advocating for illegal aliens, he should lower his expectations. Those aliens are how they stole seats in the House from red States and hope to flip those red States.
Every single developed nation on planet earth has a baseline tariff of less than 10%, and most of those nations, contrary to what you might believe, exempt the United States from paying tariffs due to trade agreements Trump just scuttled.
That’s a lie, as Donald Trump demonstrated with his posters.
Israel not only has a free trade agreement with the United States, which means virtually every American good has no tariff, but it also scrapped the few remaining tariffs with the United States. Nonetheless, it will be hit with a 17% tariff, and some Trump officials, on background this afternoon, slandered the Israelis as intellectual property thieves to justify the tariffs.
That’s what negotiations are for. CNAV will not comment on an accusation that appears only in Mr. Erickson’s article.
Essentially, they took a country's trade deficit with us as a numerator in an equation with the denominator being that nation’s exports to the United States, then multiplied by 100.
That’s another lie. Trump clearly outlined the basis of his calculations, and that is not it.
Then there is Australia. We run a trade surplus with Australia because Australia does not have a massive manufacturing base but is very wealthy, so it can afford American imports. Nonetheless, Trump is imposing a 10% tariff on Australian imports, claiming Australia, which has a free trade agreement with us, imposes a tariff on us. That is not true.
Where are your links, Mr. Erickson? And that last accusation is very rich coming from a columnist who has told two lies already.
Many American manufacturers moved their businesses to places like Vietnam, which are actually not pro-China. Now, Trump is smacking these countries, Taiwan included, with steep, steep tariffs. In addition to hurting those economies, he risks driving many of them towards China.
Mr. Erickson knows better than that. Those manufacturers have an obvious alternative: come back home. In fact, Taiwan Semiconductor has already announced plans to build new plant in the United States.
Roughly 50% of the vehicles sold in this country under $40,000.00 are imports, and that, too, will hit the working class.
All in good time. We will rebuild our manufacturing base. Ask the President of the United Auto Workers’ Union.
Worse, this will most likely lead to a recession.
No, it won’t. Not when Americans get back the jobs the free-trade sophists gave away.
Summing up
In sum, President Trump makes an ironclad case for his economic nationalism in the form of tariffs. The case against them begins with magical thinking and continues with outright lying and dissembling.
America will now stop being the spendthrift and deadbeat nation in the world. So the elites, who wanted all along to take America down with a big delayed dun, will have to find another way.
Link to:
The article:
https://cnav.news/2025/04/03/news/tariffs-trade-taxes/
Video:
Tariff announcement, reactions, and repercussions:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/04/trump-unleashes-10-baseline-tariff-all-u-s/
Trump’s Truths (posters of other countries’ tariffs):
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114270396482753269
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114270397111664712
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114270397827085442
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114270398531479278
Trump’s explanation:
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-touts-return-american-dream-historic-tariff-announcement
U.S. Trade Representative’s thread:
https://x.com/USTradeRep/status/1907569779503689792
https://x.com/USTradeRep/status/1907569781764464834
https://x.com/USTradeRep/status/1907569783312155084
https://x.com/USTradeRep/status/1907569785074016595
https://x.com/USTradeRep/status/1907569786839617560
https://x.com/USTradeRep/status/1907569788404007154
https://x.com/USTradeRep/status/1907569789997908041
https://x.com/USTradeRep/status/1907569791633858606
https://x.com/USTradeRep/status/1907569793353351416
https://x.com/USTradeRep/status/1907569795085594845
https://x.com/USTradeRep/status/1907569796528365867
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