The clock is ticking down to Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” when the US president has threatened to unleash a wide range of tariffs against countries running persistent trade imbalances with the United States.
The move – which comes as Trump has been making unprecedented use of presidential powers – is driven by his insistence that the world’s biggest economy has been “ripped off by every country in the world” and his conviction that reciprocal tariffs are needed to restore parity.
But critics warn that the strategy risks a global trade war, provoking further retaliation by major trading partners like China, Canada and the European Union.
The size of the levies to be announced on Wednesday will vary from country to country – depending on the duties they impose on US goods through import tariffs and other factors like value-added taxes. But the precise plans remain murky.
“Expect the unexpected,” said Ryan Sweet, chief US economist at Oxford Economics.
He expects the Trump administration to “take aim at some of the largest offenders”.
