President Donald Trump’s move to impose 10% baseline tariffs on all U.S. imports — along with raising tariffs on individual trading partners to approximately 50% of the rates Trump claims they currently impose on American goods — sent financial markets around the world into free fall last week.
It shouldn’t have been a shock. Trump has been calling for an overhaul of international trade since the 1980s. In a 1988 interview with Oprah Winfrey, Trump sounded the alarm over the U.S. trade deficit with Japan, accusing the country of flooding American markets with cars and electronics. At the same time, he pointed out that Japan’s trade barriers made it nearly impossible for American products to gain entry into Japanese markets. Asked what he would do differently, Trump replied that he would “make our allies pay their fair share. … I think people are tired of seeing the United States ripped off.”
