As my colleague Becca Lower reported, President Donald Trump took to the White House Rose Garden to declare “Liberation Day,” for America with a plan for reciprocal tariffs with foreign nations and an executive order signing ceremony in front of his cabinet and other assembled guests.
Trump gave remarks, which for him were actually brief; but this portion of his speech stood out:
In the coming days, there will be complaints from the globalists, and the outsourcers, and special interests, and the Fake News, always the Fake News will always complain. But, never forget, every prediction our opponents made about trade for the last 30 years has been proven totally wrong. They were wrong about NAFTA, they were wrong about China, they were wrong about the Trans Pacific Partnership, which would have been a disaster if I didn’t terminate it. If I didn’t terminate that, United Autoworkers, you would have had no jobs in this country. You would have had no jobs. It was all going to other countries. In my first term, they said tariffs would crash the economy. Instead, we built the greatest economy in the history of the world. And again, I have great respect for President Xi of China, great respect for China, but they were taking tremendous advantage of us. And, I commend them for that. I say, hey, if you can get away with it, that’s okay. But, you know, they understand exactly what’s happening and they probably, most of them are saying it’s about time they did something. But they’re going to fight, they’re going fight, everyone going’s to fight. I say to the leaders, look you gotta take care of your country, but we have to start taking care of our country now. We can’t do what we’ve been doing for the last 50 years…