Donald Trump may be planning to break one of his key—and most disastrous—campaign promises to implement “universal” tariffs on goods imported into the U.S., The Washington Post reported Monday.
Trump’s aides have been quietly prepping a plan to target only critical imports, rather than all imports from a country, three people familiar with discussions anonymously told the Post.
The tariffs would be levied on imports considered to be critical to national or economic security, the people said. While it was not immediately clear which imports those would be, the tariffs are intended to strengthen certain U.S. industries, including materials for the military supply industrial chain, medical supplies, and energy production, two of the three people said.
Trump had previously stated his intention to place a 25 percent tariff on all imports from Canada and Mexico, in addition to a 10 percent tariff on all imports from China—a plan that experts say would be disastrous for the U.S. economy, raising costs for consumers, ravaging the stock market, and severely damaging the America’s global economic standing.
Sector-based tariffs might be a “little bit easier for everybody to stomach out of the gate,” one of the people told the Post. “The thought is if you’re going to do universal tariffs, why not at least start with these targeted measures? And it would still give CEOs a massive incentive to start making their products here.”
It seems that some people inside the forthcoming Trump administration are hoping to avert some of the fallout of his outlandish, dangerous economic plan. In sharing this information, it seems insiders are hoping to float a more moderate approach to tariffs, despite what the president-elect may think. But Trump doesn’t seem to be ready to back down.
Trump immediately contradicted the reporting in a post on Truth Social. “The story in the Washington Post, quoting so-called anonymous sources, which don’t exist, incorrectly states that my tariff policy will be pared back. That is wrong,” Trump wrote. “The Washington Post knows it’s wrong. It’s just another example of Fake News.”
