Why Trump’s Plan to Escalate Tariffs Has So Many Haters
The US heavily taxed imports for much of its history before largely abandoning the policy, beginning in the 1930s, as government leaders embraced the idea of free trade.
High tariffs made a comeback during the presidency of Donald Trump, who adopted them in an effort to revitalize American manufacturing and to counter what the US regards as China’s unfair trade practices.
Trump’s successor Joe Biden kept the trend going.
Trump proposed raising tariffs to 60% for goods imported from China and to 20% for those brought in from the rest of the world.
The US currently imposes tariffs in those ranges and higher on select categories of goods, but to levy them at that level across the board would be a radical change.
Currently, for imported industrial goods, which make up 94% of US merchandise imports by value, the country has a trade-weighted average tariff rate of 2%
Bloomberg 26 October 2024
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