By Rita Cook
Correspondent
Texas Metro News
Double-digit tariffs were imposed last week on countries that have been overcharging tariffs on America for years.
While not everyone agrees with Pres. Trump’s reciprocal tariff executive order, many across the country are rallying behind the decision to demand reciprocity.
The Executive Order is “Regulating Imports with A Reciprocal Tariff to Rectify Trade Practices that Contribute to Large and Persistent Annual United States Goods Trade Deficits.”
The order implements tariffs on over 180 countries that have tariffs on US goods.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative confirmed the tariffs being imposed by Trump’s order were calculated by taking the U.S.’s trade deficit with a country and dividing it by the country’s exports to the U.S., with the “reciprocal rate” calculated by then dividing that figure by two.
The opening of the EO read this move was needed due to “underlying conditions, including a lack of reciprocity in our bilateral trade relationships, disparate tariff rates and non-tariff barriers, and U.S. trading partners’ economic policies that suppress
domestic wages and consumption, as indicated by large and persistent annual U.S. goods trade deficits, constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and economy of the United States.
That threat has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States in the domestic economic policies of key trading partners and structural imbalances in the global trading system.”
Trump said he believes the relationship between the United States and its trading partners has become highly unbalanced in recent years.
“The post-war international economic system was based upon three incorrect assumptions: first, that if the United States led the world in liberalizing tariff and non-tariff barriers the rest of the world would follow; second, that such liberalization would ultimately result in more economic convergence and increased domestic consumption among U.S. trading partners converging towards the share in the United States; and third, that as a result, the United States would not accrue large and persistent goods trade deficits.”
According to 2023 United Nations data, U.S. manufacturing output as a share of global manufacturing output was 17.4 percent, down from a peak in 2001 of 28.4 percent.
Pres. Trump pointed to a decline in U.S. manufacturing output as a “need to maintain robust and resilient domestic manufacturing capacity.” He pointed to the industrial sectors like automobiles, shipbuilding, pharmaceuticals, technology products, machine tools, and basic and fabricated metals.
“In fact, because the United States has supplied so much military equipment to other countries, U.S. stockpiles of military goods are too low to be compatible with U.S. national defense interests,” the EO read. “Furthermore, U.S. defense companies must develop new, advanced manufacturing technologies across a range of critical sectors including bio-manufacturing, batteries, and microelectronics.
“If the United States wishes to maintain an effective security umbrella to defend its citizens and homeland, as well as for its allies and partners, it needs to have a large upstream manufacturing and goods-producing ecosystem to manufacture these products without undue reliance on imports for key inputs.”
The order also pointed out that an increased reliance on foreign producers for goods compromises the U.S. economic security by “rendering U.S. supply chains vulnerable to geopolitical disruption and supply shocks.”
“The decline of U.S. manufacturing capacity threatens the U.S. economy in other ways, including through the loss of manufacturing jobs. From 1997 to 2024, the United States lost around 5 million manufacturing jobs and experienced one of the largest drops in manufacturing employment in history.
“Furthermore, many manufacturing job losses were concentrated in specific geographical areas. In these areas, the loss of manufacturing jobs contributed to the decline in rates of family formation and to the rise of other social trends, like the abuse of opioids, that have imposed profound costs on the U.S. economy.”
Trump’s words in the EO point toward the future of American competitiveness, which is dependent on reversing declining trends.
Trump’s EO made it clear tariffs will be fair and equal in the future. Already over 50 countries are reportedly ready to come to the negotiation table.
The Europeans, who will feel a hit from the reciprocal tariffs if negotiations are not worked out had Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, speaking on the on the U.S. tariffs “We do not necessarily want to retaliate but, if it is necessary, we have a strong plan to retaliate and we will use it.”
One person spoke out that Pres. Trump did not apply tariffs to Belarus, Russia, Cuba, and North Korea in his list of countries. True, but America does not need tariffs on countries it has trade sanctions with already?
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