by Ned Barnett, American Thinker:
Stop the presses!
When I originally wrote this article – way back around midnight last Friday, April 4th – I noted that five countries had already come to the bargaining table to see what could be done to create zero-based tariffs with the U.S. on a reciprocal basis.
Then, on Sunday, April 6, the usually reliable Epoch Times, citing an interview between Kevin Hassett – head of the White House’s National Economic Council – and ABC’s “This Week” host and anchor, George Stephanopoulos, noted that the number of nations eager to do away with reciprocal tariffs with Trump’s White House had grown by an order of magnitude, from five to fifty.
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This dramatic growth in our new no-tariff trading partners happened over the weekend. This is usually a time when all good U.S. bureaucrats and foreign ambassadors had better things to do than make news.
What does that mean?
It means that Trump’s straw man – reciprocal tariffs between the U.S. and any one of 180 countries – had already begun negotiating with America, with the goal of zeroing out all tariffs between the U.S. and their own countries.
Since Trump’s commitment to raise tariffs is set to begin on April 9, 2025 – just a few days from now – it’s clear that Trump’s threat has already accomplished exactly what he wanted it to do – get our trading partners to start negotiating in good faith with the goal of eschewing two-way tariffs with the U.S.
While Director Hassett didn’t name names, the president has not been reluctant to do so. We now know that among those 50 countries eager to put tariffs between their counties and ours includes Argentina, Vietnam, Canada, Mexico (those latter two had earlier tariff changes announced, which led to immediate and positive results for America) as well as Taiwan, the U.K., and Thailand.
To understand what this means and how we got there, please read on.
From the moment that President Trump announced an increase in tariffs with 180 trading-partner nations, from Gabon to the People’s Republic of China, the far left Democrats have demonstrated that the wailing and gnashing of teeth is not something confined to the Old Testament Hebrews, who reserved that for times when they really screwed up, earning them the wrath of God.
The Democrats made all manner of assumptions about the negative economic impact of raising tariffs and international trade wars.
No matter how many times they bemoan the “end of the world” impact of one of Trump’s initiatives, they just don’t get it that our president wants to bring other nations to the negotiating table, where fair and equitable solutions can be hammered out, one nation at a time.
Which is exactly what Trump’s proposed tariffs are really all about. And this is no secret.
Earlier this week, Fox News broadcast an on-camera interview with Donald Trump – way back in 1989 – that clearly demonstrated how, even then, he wanted the U.S. to use tariffs as a useful leveraging tool for bringing our trading partners to the negotiating table.
In the gnashing of teeth department, the media once again played the mouthpiece of the ultra-progressive far left.
Their threat had, they said, millions of people rushing to see how badly their 401(k)s had faired, in response to a tariff increase that had yet to take place.
In short, Wall Street was drinking its own Kool-Aid, horrified at the nonsense the Democrats had been spewing.
The first stock-market reaction to Trump’s long-promised reciprocal tariff decision – finally announced earlier this week – was to see a significant and seemingly sudden downturn in share value, even on the heels of the second beyond-expectation monthly jobs report, which revealed strength.
The media told worried investors that this act, even before it was implemented, should be terrifying to all those with 401(k) retirement accounts.
There was, in fact, a downturn, primarily in the stock exchanges, known as a correction, that had already been happening.
So this response was fueled, not by the loss in actual profitability of thousands of stock-traded companies, but by anti-Trump business and news media outlets eager to create the sudden downturn in stock prices – then claim it was all Trump’s fault. In the spirit of Ouroboros – the ancient mythological snake-God always busy eating itself, tail first – this self-created downturn has given the anti-Trump media something else to crow about.
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