Trump ends ‘Liberation Day’ suspense with new 10% worldwide tariff and additional tariffs for certain countries

The White House unveiled a two-step tariff approach as Donald Trump’s long-awaited “Liberation Day” plans were finally released during a Rose Garden event at the White House.

The president will impose a baseline tariff rate of 10% on all countries with additional tariffs to be added on top for some of what the administration considers the worst offenders.

The president said those additional rates were calculated both based on tariffs but also non-tariff barriers that Trump has long bemoaned.

Trump held up a chart at the event with the additional rates he has planned and atop the list was China, which is set to receive a 34% tariff in a list that spanned dozens of countries. The European Union was second in the list and in line for 20% duties.

To the many clamoring for protection, Trump said “I say terminate your own tariffs and drop your barriers.”

Trump said the tariff calculations were actually only half of the cheating his team found, saying he could have gone higher. He called his approach “kind reciprocal.”

Trump released the details before the vice president, top cabinet officials, congressional leaders as well as workers he said will benefit from his policies.

The dramatic move, if it holds, could reorient the global trading system for decades and represents the climax of Trump’s decades-long focus on tariffs and unfair trading relationship that he says has led to America being ripped off.

“There will be complaints from the globalists,” Trump added Wednesday, claiming “every prediction our opponents have made for 30 years have been wrong.”

Wednesday’s announcement marks a middle ground of sorts between competing tariff approaches that the president had been weighing and have been debated within the administration in recent weeks.

One early plan had focused on levying differing duties for each country while another focused on a flat universal rate that Trump had pushed on the campaign trail.

“I think the president has two primary objectives,” Kelly Ann Shaw, partner at Hogan Lovells and Trump’s deputy assistant for international economic affairs in his first term, said in a Yahoo Finance Live appearance on Wednesday.

The first “is about leveling the playing field,” and the second objective is to lessen trade deficits while leaving trading partners “guessing.”

Wednesday’s highly anticipated unveiling comes at a delicate moment for the economy and markets, with stocks facing volatility for weeks on ever-changing tariff news and also few indications that this week’s announcement will quickly end the investor uncertainty.