The losers and winners of Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariff plan
President Donald Trump unveiled his latest tariff plan last week on “Liberation Day,” which the administration said will restore the American Dream and spark an economic boon for U.S. workers.
“American steel workers, auto workers, farmers and skilled craftsmen,” Trump said from the White House Rose Garden last Wednesday afternoon in his announcement. “We have a lot of them here with us today. They really suffered, gravely. They watched in anguish as foreign leaders have stolen our jobs, foreign cheaters have ransacked our factories, and foreign scavengers have torn apart our once-beautiful American dream. We had an American dream that you don’t hear so much about. You did four years ago, and you are now. But you don’t too often.”
“Now it’s our turn to prosper, and in so doing, use trillions and trillions of dollars to reduce our taxes and pay down our national debt,” he continued. “And it will all happen very quickly. With today’s action, we are finally going to be able to make America great again, greater than ever before. Jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country, and you see it happening already. We will supercharge our domestic industrial base.”
The Trump administration’s tariff plan leveled a baseline tariff of 10% on all imports to the U.S., while customized tariffs were set for countries that have higher tariffs in place on American goods. The baseline tariffs of 10% took effect on Saturday, while the other tariffs will take effect on April 9.
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Trump pointed to the European Union during his announcement, and explained the U.S. will charge the EU a 20% tariff, compared to its39%tariffs on the U.S. Japan will see24% tariffs, compared to the 46% the country charges the U.S., while China will be hit with a34% tariff, compared to the 67% it charges the U.S.
The customized tariffs, Trump explained, would not be full reciprocal tariffs, as his administration was “very kind” and leveled tariffs that are roughly half of what a particular nation was charging the U.S. on tariffs.
“For nations that treat us badly, we will calculate the combined rate of all their tariffs, nonmonetary barriers and other forms of cheating,” Trump said Wednesday.
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“And because we are being very kind, we will charge them approximately half of what they are and have been charging us,” he said. “So, the tariffs will be not a full reciprocal. I could have done that. Yes. But it would have been tough for a lot of countries.”
Fox News Digital examined the full tariff list and spoke to experts about who stands to lose the most due to the tariffs, and who will likely benefit and tackle the new tariffs victoriously.
LOSERS
Fox News Digital spoke with Samir Kapadia, a managing principal at the lobbying and advisory firmthe Vogel Group, who explained Vietnam will likely lose the most business due to the upcoming tariffs.
VIETNAM
“Vietnam has long been an amicable trade partner with the United States for a variety of sectors, whether that would be textiles and apparel or computers and consumer electronics, but there has been a gross inequity in the bilateral trade relationship. Vietnam simply doesn’t have the economy or the resources to import from the United States and to… provide that reciprocity,” Kapadia explained.
Vietnam charges the U.S. a 90% tariff on imported goods to the nation. The Trump administration last week announced the Southeast Asian country will face a 46% tariff on goods imported to the U.S.
Vietnam’s industries are also deeply rooted in Chinese business investments, Kapadia said.
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“To add insult to injury, they also have been a hot bed for Chinese investment. Since the imposition of the Section 301 tariffs under the first Trump administration, which were these large-scale tariffs on Chinese imports, you had a whole number of Chinese companies across a variety of industries in the consumer product segment basically invest, instead, in factories in Vietnam as a way to circumvent paying tariffs, so the Chinese would keep their market share, but just go and make it in another country,” he explained.
Trump signed a memo under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 in 2018 under his first administration targeting Chinese goods for U.S. tariffs in response to Chinese theft of American intellectual property, Trump said at the time.
“This was by far the worst day for the Vietnamese government, in the sense, they’re realizing that that door has now closed. A 46% tariff – Vietnam is not an attractive country to import from. The numbers won’t work,” Kapadia said of the new rounds of tariffs targeting Vietnam.
The Asian nation has already felt the pinch, and called on Trump to delay the tariffs from taking effect this weekend.
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Vietnam’s leader To Lam wrote a letter to Trump on Saturday, the New York Times reported, asking him to delay the imposition of the tariffs for at least 45 days and for the pair of world leaders to meet in Washington, D.C., in May “to jointly come to an agreement on this important matter, for the benefit of both our peoples and to contribute to peace, stability and development in the region and the world.”
CHINA
The “biggest losers” from Trump’s Wednesday announcement are “without question” China and Vietnam, Kapadia said.
China was hit with a 34% tariff as part of Trump’s announcement last week, which is in addition to previous tariffs leveled on the nation. Kappadia said the newest upcoming tariff and the “high-band” tariffs of 45% on some Chinese goods puts the country’s tariff barrier at about 75% to 80%, which Kapadia predicted could grow to 150% by the end of 2025.
“That’s because there’s just a lot of ongoing challenges with China that have not begun to kind of roll-out or get resolved, and ultimately the United States is going to have to continue to pressure U.S. companies to invest more in the United States, and the only way to do that is to continue to put pressure on China,” Kapadia said.
The trade expert continued that other nations, particularly European export sectors, could also see fallout from the tariff plan in regard to luxury products or household purchases, but that it’s too early to predict where the chips will fall with Europe.
“I think that that might resolve itself over time, depending upon how the Europeans behave. From what we’ve seen, just early next week, we’re going to have some dignitaries and officials from Europe come and visit the president to negotiate on a potential resolution. All in the meanwhile, they are threatening a retaliatory 20% tariff to kind of make this tit-for-tat based on the reciprocal tariff announcement, but we know from the president that all that’s going to do is turn the 20% that we put on Europe to 40%,” he said.
WINNERS
Kapadia pointed to India and Japan as the two nations that will benefit from Trump’s tariff plan last week.
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“We have seen both the Japanese head of state and the Indian head of state come to Washington and provide the president with opportunities where they would then reduce their own tariff barriers,” he said.
“Just a week before this announcement, Prime Minister Modi came out and provided a whole list to the government… that says, ‘Here are all the things that I’m going to reduce, in terms of tariffs of U.S. exports to India’ And so I think that’s going to continue. And I think that they’re going to make headway at getting toward more equitable trade between the two countries,” he added.
INDIA and JAPAN
Trump unveiled a 27% tariff on India on “Liberation Day” and a 24% tariff on Japan.
“I think that they’re going to make headway at getting toward more equitable trade between the two countries, whether that’s India and the U.S. or Japan and the U.S., and honestly serves to the U.S.’ benefit to rectify some of those tariff barriers with India,” he said. “It is the largest democratic country in the world, and they are strategic ally for geopolitical reasons and a number of other considerations. And so they’re going to be a country that I think we have to watch and really see how they negotiate their way through this new tariff regime.”
Kapadia pointed to a handful of U.S. companies that operate in India, such as Lego, Apple and Goldman Sachs, and predicted companies that have made large-scale investments in India will likely stay there, while they will likely move other overseas operations in nations facing even higher tariffs, such as Vietnam, to India.
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“You name it, a whole slew of U.S. companies have made concerted, large-scale investments in India. I think that they’re going to stick to them. I think they’re going to grow there. And if you look at the difference, just on our arbitrage basis, 46% versus 26% – that’s a big Delta. So if you’re Apple, and you’re making Apple technology, Apple-related products in Vietnam, and you’re importing at 46%, or you’re making it in India at 26%, you’re obviously going to double down on your India effort,” he said.
Kapadia continued that Trump’s latest tariff policies target corporate America, which opens the doors to which industries will move back to U.S. soil to avoid the tariffs. He pointed to “critical industries” such as semiconductor manufacturing, critical minerals, aluminum and steel manufacturing delivering large-scale investments in the U.S. both this year and next year, to increase capacity and production “out of necessity.” He noted that Trump’s customized reciprocal tariffs are not stackable with existing tariffs on certain industry imports, such as steel and aluminum.
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“That’s going to be the opportunity for the jobs to be created, for the investment to happen. Whereas on the multilateral kind of, ‘Hey, here’s our new kind of blended rate for these 60 odd countries,’ that’s just going to be finding more equity with a foreign direct investment from those countries,” he said.
U.S. WORKERS
In America’s Rust Belt, which stretches from Illinois to upstate New York, critical industries are ramping up production under the second Trump administration and locals are excited after decades of old industrial towns economically suffering, Ohio Republican Rep. Michael Rulli told Fox News Digital in an exclusive Zoom interview.
“They did a study by the Census Bureau in 1949, and they looked at the top 20 most influential cities that were prosperous in the United States. And I want you to think about some of these names on this [list]. They’re names like Buffalo, Detroit, Cleveland, Youngstown, Allentown, Pittsburgh. That isn’t the case anymore. For the 50 years after that, we saw both political parties celebrate putting jobs across in other countries,” Rulli said.
Rulli reflected on 1977’s “Black Monday” in Youngstown, Ohio, when steel manufacturer Campbell Works of Youngstown Sheet and Tube shuttered its doors and left thousands of workers unemployed in a chilling move that is still felt in the area today.
“We have Vallourec up in Youngstown, Ohio, that’s making all the pipe that you use for fracking. And that’s really exciting,” Rulli said. “When you put energy first, it ties in with the whole Ohio six. We’re gonna start building power plants, cracker plants. We’re going to put America back on the map with energy. And it’s all happening with this agenda that’s going right in front of your eyes. And it starts with tariffs. Remember, we have to have a starting place for ‘Art of the Deal.’ And the president has put that bar very high. We have every ability to negotiate fair trade deals with these other countries right now.”
The Ohio congressman said he toured Mingo Junction, Ohio, home to a JSW steel plant, and saw how the steel industry is coming back to life in the area after decades of dormancy.
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“Two weeks ago, I spent several hours touring the entire steel mill and how incredible it was in Mingo Junction, Ohio, actually the birthplace of my grandma. So it was like sort of a full circle. We’re bringing back steel in America. How about that? And they’re re-looking at it. They’re being very specific. It’s almost like a boutique steel making process and they’re expanding. It’s really a great triumph,” he said.
With jobs, Rulli argued, crime and addiction woes that have plagued the nation in recent years will fall, while generations of families that previously worked in the steel industry can carry on the tradition,
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“This is Art of the Deal. In the 1950s, America was at its highest point ever. And what we’ve done since then is pretty much gutted the working-class, blue-collar. And I think the people in my district realized this, you know, when we see some of these tariffs that are put on the United States, that they put 60, 70, 80% tariffs on us, and we send our product to them with no tariffs. I think this is the greatest, basically, reconfiguration of trade that has ever happened in American history. And it’s very exciting, especially if you go by the America First agenda,” he said.
Fox News Digital’s Diana Stancy contributed to this report.