President Donald Trump declared a national emergency on foreign trade and economic practices last Wednesday.
The president announced new tariffs on April 2, referred to as, “Liberation Day,” and imposed responsive tariffs to strengthen the international economic position of the United States and protect American workers.
The Trump administration clarified on the fact sheet they would impose a 10 percent tariff on all countries starting April 5. They will also impose higher individualized reciprocal tariffs effective on April 9 for countries with the largest trade deficits such as China which will receive a 34 percent tariff and 89 other nations.
An increase in tariffs means that business owners will either have to front the costs or pass some if not all of their additional costs onto consumers. If passed, low-income consumers will feel the impact the most, according to the Heritage Foundation.
These reverberations are also felt by numerous students who are concerned for the health of the economy and the unexpected costs the tariffs will levy against them.
At a press briefing on April 1 with White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, an audience member inquired what would happen if the plan for tariffs wouldn’t work and she responded, “They’re not going to be wrong. It’s going to work.”
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), some grocery items expected to impact business owners and consumers the most include seafood, rice, cheese, and nuts with tariffs ranging from a 10 to 46 percent increase. Asian nations are currently facing the most impact.
Birdie Bachman, a freshman political science major from Washington expressed deep frustrations over the effects of tariffs on ordinary citizens.
“Only Trump could look at an uninhabited island full of penguins and think, ‘ya, let’s slap a 10% tariff on their fishing imports.’ It feels more of a temper tantrum, and now we Americans are paying for it,” Bachman said.
Trump wrote in a TruthSocial post on April 5 that the economy has already received significant benefits from increasing the tariffs, claiming “Already, more than five trillion dollars of investment! This is an economic revolution, and we will win. Hang tough, it won’t be easy, but the end result will be historic. We will Make America Great Again!!!.”
China retaliated against the proposed increase in reciprocal tariffs by setting the tariffs imported to America to 34 percent, according to PBS.
In addition, China pulled back on a deal to sell the social media platform, TikTok to U.S. investors shortly after Trump announced the increase in global tariffs.
The spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, Guo Jiakun, made a Facebook post in response, stating “The market has spoken. The trade and tariff war started by the U.S. is unprovoked and unjustified. Now is the time for the U.S. to stop doing the wrong things and resolve the differences with trading partners through equal-footed consultation.”
The post shows stocks decreasing over 5 percent from the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Standard and Poor’s (S&P) 500, and National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (NASDAQ) Composite.
Copy edited by Aniyah Genama
