In a press appearance with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, U.S. President Donald Trump declared, “We are a reciprocal nation now; everything [regarding tariffs] is going to be reciprocal.” Trump announced tariffs that will go into effect April 1 on India and many nations, equal (reciprocal) to those nations’ tariffs on the same items from the United States. The same day, Trump signed an Executive Order in support of “reciprocal tariffs.”
The policy is that those nations each could remove or lower their own tariffs, and the threatened U.S. tariff would then be cancelled or reduced. The reciprocal tariffs idea originated with the McKinley Tariff Act of 1890, as worked out with Sen. James G. Blaine (R-ME), who was then Secretary of State and was the real architect of reciprocity; while Rep. William McKinley became known as “the Napoleon of Tariffs” and was thus helped to gain the White House.
“This is going to be what pays down the $36 trillion in debt,” President Trump said in his Oval Office press conference Feb. 13, presumably meaning both the “April Fools’ Day tariffs,” and any and all other tariffs which may be levied and maintained. Aside from the fact that the debt will be $38 trillion by the end of FY2025 in September, no such paydown will happen, even if the threatened reciprocal tariffs are levied.
