The secretary of state said there will be tariffs on countries that match what they impose on the United States.
The United States could engage in talks with other countries on new trade arrangements once U.S. tariffs “reset the baseline” with those countries, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on March 16.
In an interview with CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” Rubio said that President Donald Trump’s tariffs are meant to rebalance the United States’ international economic standing after decades of unfair global trade practices.
“For 30 or 40 years, we have allowed countries to treat us unfairly in global trade, much of it during the Cold War because we wanted them to be rich and prosperous because they were our allies in the Cold War,” Rubio told host Margaret Brennan. “But now, that has to change.”
Trump’s tariffs are already affecting the United States’ closest neighbors, with imports from Canada and Mexico now being taxed at 25 percent. Trump has also called for a 200 percent tariff on alcohol from the European Union, a response to the bloc’s plans to impose a 50 percent tax on U.S. whiskey imports.
The latest clashes come on the heels of new U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum, which took effect on March 12. Canada and Europe—two of the United States’ largest trade partners—have criticized the duties as unjustified and retaliated with their own tariffs on U.S. goods. The EU’s two-part countermeasures are set to kick in on April 1.
Rubio said that it’s unfair that Europe, with an economy comparable in size to that of the United States, exports more goods and services to the United States than it imports from the United States.
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The secretary then stated two main goals of the Trump administration’s trade policy. First, he said, the focus is on boosting domestic manufacturing in critical industries, such as aluminum, steel, semiconductors, and automobiles, with the tariffs to be used as leverage to secure economic incentives for manufacturers to produce within the United States.
The second focus, according to Rubio, is to pursue reciprocal tariffs on countries that already impose tariffs on the United States to create a more balanced trading environment.
“This is global—it’s not against Canada, it’s not against Mexico, it’s not against the EU; it’s everybody,” he said.
“And then from that new baseline of fairness and reciprocity, we will engage, potentially, in bilateral negotiations with countries around the world on new trade arrangements that make sense for both sides.”
He reiterated that the United States has been on the receiving end of unfair trade relations.
“We’re going to reset the baseline and then we can enter into these bilateral agreements, potentially, with countries so that our trade is fair,” he said.
Although Rubio did not elaborate on what the new trade agreements might look like, he made it clear that the current situation can no longer be tolerated.
“We are going to set a new status quo and then we can negotiate something, if they want to, that is fair for both sides,” he said. “But what we have now cannot continue.”
