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Donald Trump's Rose Garden "Liberation Day" event was a set-piece moment he believes will kickstart a gradual American revival.
But at what immediate cost for the American people and countries globally?
And was it all a deceptive con?
Trump latest: Tariffs a ‘major blow to world economy’
It was, for sure, an expert-defying exercise in Trumponomics.
For decades, the president said, the US “has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike”.
He relished in the big reveal – giant charts in which the global interdependent economic ecosystem, built over decades, was simplified into two columns and a set of percentages.
In the first column, the tariffs Trump says are charged to America, calculated by undisclosed and very questionable White House arithmetic.
And in the next column, what Trump’s America will now levy.
He relished in what he saw in front of him. It felt like he was seeing some of the numbers for the first time.
Donald Trump brandishing his tariff board.
Pic: AP
“China, first row…” he said. “European Union, they’re very tough… Vietnam… Taiwan… Japan… India, very very tough… Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia – ooh look at Cambodia, look, at 97%!” he said.
His commerce secretary, next to him, smiled with delight.
Some of the world’s poorest countries – with their own barriers in place surely only to protect their fledgling economies – will be hit so hard having already been crippled by the USAID cuts.
Beyond the Trumponomics though, there was also a distinct air of deception about it all.
Precisely how had his team calculated their numbers?
Take South Korea, with which the US has a trade agreement. It is not charging a 50% tariff on US exports as Trump’s charts claim. Is the EU really charging America a 39% tariff? No.
Team Trump’s maths adds undisclosed “currency manipulation” calculations and non-tariff barriers (of which the EU has many, to be fair) to the calculations.
But the numbers and the arithmetic are still hard to explain.
Read more:
Trump tariff saga far from over
‘Liberation Day’ explained
What Sky correspondents make of Trump’s tariffs
