"We're Going To Pay Down Debt": Donald Trump On Tariffs

US President Donald Trump on Monday defended the reciprocal tariffs imposed on dozens of trading partners, saying he should have done this "many years ago". The Republican leader asserted that the US is going to pay down debt with the hundreds of billions of dollars coming into the country.

"We're going to pay down debt. We have a lot of money coming in - much more money than the country's ever seen. One of the things we're going to be doing is reducing debt. We should've done this many years ago. I did this during my first term with China. We didn't get to the rest because Covid hit," Trump told reporters.

He added that he wants to see reciprocal tariffs "wherever" he can.

"I'm not looking for leverage, I'm looking for fairness. We want to see reciprocal wherever we can and as much as possible. Sometimes, it would be too much for them to handle. It would be a much bigger number. And all I can say is this: Our country will be taking in hundreds of billions of dollars," he said.

Barely six months after he returned to the White House, Trump demolished the old global economic order and used US' enormous economic power to punish countries that won't agree to one-sided trade deals and extract huge concessions from the ones that do.

On April 2, the US President announced "reciprocal" taxes of up to 50 per cent on imports from countries with which the US ran trade deficits and 10 per cent "baseline" taxes on almost all other countries. He invoked a 1977 law to declare the trade deficit a national emergency that justified his sweeping import taxes. As the announcement triggered a backlash, he suspended the reciprocal tariffs for 90 days to give countries a chance to negotiate. Eventually, some of them caved in to Trump's demands.

The countries that did not cave in got hit harder with the tariffs.

In Trump's latest bid to reshape the global trade in favour of US businesses, he signed a new executive order slapping higher tariffs on dozens of countries - hours before the trade deal deadline on August 1.

The higher tariffs ranged from 10 per cent to 41 per cent for 69 trading partners. These included: 41 per cent on Syria, 35 per cent on Canada, 50 per cent on Brazil, 25 per cent on India, 39 per cent on Switzerland, and 20 per cent on Taiwan. Trump, however, slashed the tariffs on Pakistan, bringing it down to 19 per cent from the previous 29 per cent.