Epoch Times - Trump’s Reciprocal Tariffs: Will They Work? | Peter St Onge
Aired: 2025-03-15
Duration: 03:23


=== Barriers to Export Success (03:23) ===

[00:00:00]  Generally speaking, other countries are putting a lot more tariffs on us than we've been putting on them.
[00:00:09]  Tariffs written out on paper, a lot of them are non-tariff barriers, so they'll block our imports by claiming some environmental or some health rule.
[00:00:20]  Many of them are VATs, which are a type of income tax or a type of sales tax that most countries in the world impose.
[00:00:28]  Those hit our goods if we sell stuff to France, but then France exempts its own products.
[00:00:34]  So there's a variety.
[00:00:36]  of barriers that countries put on us.
[00:00:39]  And for Europe, for example, they tax us at roughly 18% more than we tax them.
[00:00:46]  What Trump is doing is that he is very good at spotting the details of a negotiation.
[00:00:56]  OK, of understanding who holds which cards and then seeing whether he can get a better deal.
[00:01:01]  And when he looks at Europe, you know, the striking thing about really every one of our trade partners is that they need us a heck of a lot more than we need them.
[00:01:11]  So to give a flavor, something like one to two percent of the American economy is producing for export to Canada or to Mexico.
[00:01:20]  On the other hand, one fifth, 20 percent of the Canadian economy.
[00:01:25]  is producing for export to the US. One third of the Mexican economy is producing for export to the US. That means that we have massive leverage over these countries.
[00:01:36]  Now, we could just make them dance to entertain us, but specifically what Trump is interested in doing is getting them to lower those barriers.
[00:01:43]  And what he's saying is, if you get rid of your barriers, we'll get rid of our barriers.
[00:01:48]  But in the meantime, we're going to calculate how much we think you're tariffing us with those non-tariff barriers and the VAT tax and all this.
[00:01:55]  And we're going to put the exact same on you.
[00:01:57]  And so because the U.S. economy is so important, right?
[00:02:02]  Mexico cannot give up a third of its economy.
[00:02:04]  They'll have riots.
[00:02:06]  They can't do it.
[00:02:07]  And so what Trump is sort of doing is recognizing the enormous leverage we have over these countries.
[00:02:13]  Now, that's not even to speak of the military.
[00:02:16]  So there's a number of countries in the world that only exist because the American taxpayer covers their bills.
[00:02:22]  For military.
[00:02:23]  This is true of Europe.
[00:02:24]  It's true of Japan.
[00:02:25]  Korea.
[00:02:26]  Certainly it's true of Taiwan.
[00:02:27]  It is outrageous that any of these countries should have any trade barriers whatsoever against us, given what we give to them.
[00:02:35]  So Trump recognizes this.
[00:02:37]  I think the biggest shock of it has been why for the past 80 years has America been running around shining everybody's shoes when we always had 10 to 1 leverage over these countries.
[00:02:48]  You can debate perhaps there's something corrupt going on there that, you know, senators in the U.S. get sweetheart jobs when they leave office.
[00:02:57]  There may be quite a bit of that.
[00:02:59]  I hope Doge might look.
[00:03:01]  And I think they will.
[00:03:02]  But for the moment, what Trump is doing that's different from previous administrations is he's recognizing that.
[00:03:07]  He's saying to other countries, if you are going to tariff us, not just tariff, if you're going to do other outrageous things.
[00:03:14]  So, for example, Colombia didn't want to take back its illegal immigrants, criminal illegal immigrants.
[00:03:18]  They said, nah, no thanks, we don't want them.
[00:03:20]  And so Trump threatened 25% tariffs.