‘Will Forever Be Remembered’: Trump Announces ‘Liberation Day’ Tariffs, Massive 25% On All Cars And Global ‘Reciprocal’ Tariffs
President Donald Trump gave his long-awaited “Liberation Day” speech on Wednesday from the White House and announced steep new tariffs on all cars coming into the United States. Trump also announced reciprocal tariffs worldwide to match any and all tariffs placed on U.S. goods — as well as a baseline 10% tariff on all imports.
Trump began the speech declaring that 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 added he will sign an executive order placing “reciprocal tariffs on countries throughout the world.” Trump later showed a chart with the exact percentages.
As the speech went on Trump laid out his gripe with foreign countries related to the auto industry. “Likewise, until today, the United States has, for decades, charged a 2.5 tariff — think of that — 2. 5 percent on foreign-made automobiles. The European Union charges us more than 10 percent tariffs, and they have — 20 percent VATs, much, much higher. India charges 70 percent, and perhaps, worst of all, are the non-monetary restrictions imposed by South Korea, Japan, and very many other nations as a result of these colossal trade barriers,” he said, adding:
81 percent of the cars in South Korea are made in South Korea. 94 percent of cars in Japan are made in Japan. Toyota sells one million foreign-made automobiles into the United States and General Motors sells almost none. Ford sells very little.
None of our companies are allowed to go into other countries, and I say that’s friend and foe. And in many cases, the friend is worse than the foe, in terms of trade. But such horrendous imbalances have devastated our industrial base and put our national security at risk. I don’t blame these other countries at all for this calamity.
I blame former presidents and past leaders who weren’t doing their job. They let it happen, and they let it happen to an extent that nobody can even believe.
That’s why effective at midnight. We will impose a 25 percent tariff on all foreign-made automobiles.
Trump then brought a guest on stage, “Thank you, Brian. I’d like to have you come up here for a second, okay? I just see him sitting. He’s been a fan of ours, and he understands this business a lot better than the economists, a lot better than anybody. Brian, say a few words please, would you?”
“Thank you. It’s a great honor to have you. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. President. I grew up just north of Detroit, Michigan, in McComb County, known as the home of the Reagan Democrats. My first vote for president was for Ronald Reagan. I thought that was going to be the best president I ever saw in my lifetime until Donald J. Trump came along. I have watched my entire life, I have watched plant after plant after plant in Detroit and in the metro Detroit area close. There are now plants sitting idle, there are now plants that are underutilized and Donald Trump’s policies are going to bring product back into those underutilized plants,” said Brian, wearing a worker’s vest, adding:
There’s going to be new investment, there’s going to be new plants built and the UAW members and I brought 20 of them with me. They’re sitting right over here. We support Donald Trump’s policies on tariffs 100 percent. So, Mr. President, we can’t thank you enough. And in six months or a year, we’re going to begin to see the benefits. I can’t wait to see what’s happening three or four years down the road. Thank you, Mr President.
“What a great guy. He got it right from the beginning. He got before almost anybody else. This group over there, they got it too. And, you know, we won the state of Michigan. We won almost all of them. But we won Michigan by a lot. And I want to just thank you all. The autoworkers were fantastic. The teamsters were fantastic, too,” Trump said.
Watch the clip above via Fox News.
