Former president Donald Trump on Wednesday appeared to open the door to significantly expanding his plans to impose sweeping new tariffs if he returns to office, suggesting an escalation in proposals that many experts already see as likely to cause a global trade war.<\/p>\n
Previously, the Republican presidential nominee had called for levying tariffs of 10 percent on all U.S. trading partners, aiming to create a \u201cring around the collar\u201d of the national economy. But during remarks on the economy in Asheville, N.C., Trump for the first time floated tariffs of between \u201c10 and 20 percent\u201d on imports to the United States.<\/p>\n
The Trump campaign sought to play down the significance of the comment and said the former president did not specify that the 20 percent tariff would apply to all nations. Still, the new figure represented an intensification of Trump\u2019s trade proposals, which have already alarmed some Republican donors wary of disrupting the global trade order and have faced heavy criticism from Democratic lawmakers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to have 10 to 20 percent tariffs on foreign countries that have been ripping us off for years,\u201d Trump said Wednesday. \u201cWe\u2019re going to charge them 10 to 20 percent to come in and take advantage of our country.\u201d<\/p>\n
His comments on trade came as part of a speech designed to focus on the economy that stretched more than an hour. He attempted to hammer his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, as polls suggest she is gaining ground in the race. Trump reprised his calls for eliminating taxes on tips and Social Security, said he would lower energy costs, and also exaggerated the extent of inflation and spending under the Biden administration.<\/p>\n
The tariff remark could draw renewed attention to the former president\u2019s economic plans and his first-term approach to global trade. A 10 percent universal tariff, coupled with a tariff of as much as 60 percent on China that Trump has also eyed, would cost a typical middle-income household roughly $1,700 per year, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a pro-trade Washington-based think tank. Doubling that would increase its costs to U.S. households, while probably doing more to shield domestic producers from foreign competition.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has been 10 percent universal across the board \u2014 20 percent would be a doubling of that, and all analyses have already shown that would be detrimental to the economy,\u201d said Erica York, an analyst at the Tax Foundation, a conservative-leaning think tank. \u201cIt\u2019s an escalation of what would already be an escalation from his first term.\u201d<\/p>\n
Doug Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a center-right think tank, said: \u201cHe has clearly floated the 10 percent, and if he\u2019s now saying \u201810 to 20 percent\u2019 you can assume the baseline is the same \u2014 that seems like a reasonable conclusion to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Holtz-Eakin said many business leaders are concerned with the seemingly erratic nature of Trump\u2019s policy process. \u201cIf you go to 10 to 20 percent in North Carolina, who is to say you won\u2019t go to 40 percent in Wisconsin?\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s speech on the economy came two days before Harris is set to roll out her own economic plan in Raleigh, N.C. After Harris said this past weekend that she also supported no taxes on tips, Trump accused her of copying his ideas.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen Kamala lays out her fake economic plan this week, [it] probably will be a copy of my plan because basically that\u2019s what she does,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), leaned into a similar argument Wednesday, criticizing the Harris campaign as \u201ca fake platform that offers no specifics about how to do the people\u2019s businesses and a fake promise to change the government.\u201d (Harris\u2019s running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, has committed to an Oct. 1 vice-presidential debate with CBS. Vance has yet to commit.)<\/p>\n
Although Trump\u2019s Wednesday speech was billed as focusing on the economy, he frequently veered into other topics and lobbed personal attacks at his rival. He claimed \u2014 without evidence \u2014 that President Joe Biden was a \u201cvery angry man\u201d because he is no longer the Democratic nominee for president and suggested: \u201cHe\u2019s going to put you in World War III.\u201d He also attacked Harris as the \u201cborder czar,\u201d a frequent Republican attack line. (Though Biden asked Harris to negotiate with Central American countries to help address the root causes of migration, he never put her in charge of border policy.)<\/p>\n
Trump also mocked Harris\u2019s laugh, calling it \u201cthe laugh of a person with some big problems.\u201d He also repeatedly mispronounced her first name \u2014 a move that critics called an attempt to other-ize her \u2014 and commented on a recent Time magazine cover story about Harris. (\u201cI want to use that artist, I want to find that artist, I like him very much,\u201d he said.) He spoke in apocalyptic terms as he described what would happen if Harris wins the White House, predicting \u201ca 1929 style depression.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s and Harris\u2019s decision to talk about the economy in North Carolina highlights the broader importance of the state in this year\u2019s election. A Democrat has not won North Carolina in a presidential race since 2008, but the party is showing interest in competing there this cycle. The Washington Post\u2019s polling average has Trump leading Harris by three percentage points in the state. Biden was trailing Trump by five points before he dropped out.<\/p>\n
Asheville, where Trump spoke, has leaned Democratic in recent presidential elections. It is in Buncombe County, which Trump lost in 2016 and 2020. (Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton received 54 percent of the vote in 2016, and Biden received 60 percent in 2020.) Trump, however, has won all seven counties that border Buncombe County twice.<\/p>\n
In the presidential race, Democrats have devoted more than $15 million on television ads between now and Election Day, while Republicans are spending $12 million, according to AdImpact, a firm that tracks advertising outlays.<\/p>\n
LeVine reported from Asheville. Stein and Arnsdorf reported from Washington. Dan Keating, Meryl Kornfield and Scott Clement contributed to this report<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Former president Donald Trump on Wednesday appeared to open the door to significantly expanding his plans to impose sweeping new tariffs if he returns to office, suggesting an escalation in proposals that many experts already see as likely to cause a global trade war. Previously, the Republican presidential nominee had called for levying tariffs of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7913,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}