President Trump on Monday promised the U.S. would soon institute a “reciprocal tax” against countries that take advantage of the U.S.
[February 12, 2018 | Inside US Trade]
At a White House meeting with governors and business executives to discuss his infrastructure plans, Trump diverted to trade to say “we are going to charge countries, outside of our country, countries that take advantage of the United States. Some of them are so-called allies but they’re not allies on trade. They’ll send in their product and we won’t charge them anything and we send them our product, same product as they’re sending us, and they’ll charge us 50 and 75 percent tax. And that’s very unfair.”
“So we’re going to be doing very much a reciprocal tax,” he continued, without explaining what form it might take – though he did decry what he called other countries’ “tariffs and taxes” on U.S. goods.
“You’ll be hearing about that during the week and during the coming months,” he said of his reciprocal tax plans. “But not fair when we’re taken advantage of. That’s why we have these big trade deficits.”
