Trump hits Korea with 25% 'reciprocal' tariffs

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Trump hits Korea with 25% 'reciprocal' tariffs

Published: 03 Apr. 2025, 07:06 Updated: 03 Apr. 2025, 19:53

SARAH CHEA
[email protected]

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

U.S. President Donald Trump holds a signed executive order after delivering remarks on reciprocal tariffs during an event in the Rose Garden entitled ″Make America Wealthy Again″ at the White House in Washington on April 2. [AFP/YONHAP]

U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced plans to impose 25 percent "reciprocal" tariffs on Korea as he seeks to cut America's trade deficits and bolster domestic manufacturing.

Korea was selected as one of the "worst offenders" by the White House to apply higher rates along with China and Japan while Trump declared a 10 percent "baseline" tariff on all foreign countries.

Trump made the much-anticipated announcement on the baseline and reciprocal tariffs, which will go into effect at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday and at 12:01 a.m. on April 9, respectively, as he hosted the "Make America Wealthy Again" event at the White House Rose Garden.

Korea and other U.S. trading partners keenly watched the announcement on the day, which Trump hyped up as "Liberation Day," as they have been struggling to navigate through the growing list of the Trump administration's new tariffs.

"This is Liberation Day ... April 2, 2025 will forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn, the day America's destiny was reclaimed, and the day that we began to make America wealthy again," he said in a speech at the event.

With a chart showing individualized reciprocal tariffs, Trump cast the new duties as "kind" and "common sense," claiming that the U.S. will impose just half the rate each targeted country was supposed to pay.

The chart showed 34 percent reciprocal tariffs for China, 20 percent for the European Union, 46 percent for Vietnam, 32 percent for Taiwan, 24 percent for Japan, 26 percent for India, 36 percent for Thailand, 31 percent for Switzerland, 32 percent for Indonesia, 24 percent for Malaysia, 49 percent for Cambodia and 10 percent for Britain.

The country-by-country tariffs were customized based on trading partners' tariff- and non-tariff barriers as well as other factors, such as countries' exchange rate-related policies and practices, officials have said.

"For decades, the United States slashed trade barriers on other countries, while those nations placed massive tariffs on our products and created outrageous non-monetary barriers to decimate our industries, and in many cases, the non-monetary barriers were worse than the monetary ones," Trump said.

Renewing claims that America has been "ripped off for more than 50 years," the president said that the "golden age of America" is coming back.

The latest U.S. tariffs represented an expansion of Trump's trade war on a global scale given that the tariff fight had affected some countries, including China, Canada and Mexico, as well as several product targets, such as steel and aluminum.

Korea had anxiously awaited the tariff announcement as it was expected to become a target for Trump's tariff pressure given that the U.S. trade deficit with Korea was tallied at US$66 billion last year, a nearly 30 percent rise from the previous year, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

BY YONHAP, SARAH CHEA [[email protected]]