The second Trump administration and late-stage Maoism

Late-stage Trumpism is not going to be any prettier

President Trump has declared April 2 ‘Liberation Day,’ when his administration will impose reciprocal tariffs on the rest of the world. The US has told Canadian officials not to even bother trying to negotiate on reciprocal tariffs ahead of their announcement. The tariffs are expected to be on a country-by-country basis, despite efforts within the administration to simplify the regime into a smaller number of tariff buckets. Country-by-country tariffs will create thousands of tariff lines and an administrative and compliance nightmare for US importers.

Flint Global did an analysis of what reciprocal tariffs might look like based on bilateral trade balances, tax and tariff rates and non-tariff barriers (NTBs). Based on their analysis, Australia could expect a 25% tariff, including a 17% assessment for our NTBs. While I would not take that figure too literally, Australia is well in scope on a relative basis.

Trump's ‘liberation day’ social media post tied reciprocal tariffs directly to US monetary policy, effectively asking the Fed to accommodate the transition to Trump’s juche economy.