Trump has just gone through the history of tariffs in America and is implying (without directly saying it) that it was other countries which paid these taxes, which made America rich.

That is not how a trade tariff works – a tariff is an import tax on a good. So the importer pays it, and then factors it in to their cost to the consumer.

Trump:

Starting tomorrow, the United States will implement reciprocal tariffs on other nations. It’s been a long time since we even thought of that. We used to think about it a lot, we didn’t think about it for many decades and you see what’s happened.

For nations that treat us badly, we will calculate the combined rate of all their tariffs, non-monetary barriers and other forms of cheating, and because we are being very kind, we’re kind people, very kind, you’re not so kind when you got ripped off salaries my auto worker friends and teamsters friends and all of the unions that were voting Democrat, they’re not voting Democrat anyone, because worker, whether union or not worker, they’re for the Republicans now.

That’s what happened. But we will charge them approximately half of what they are and have been charging us.

So the tariffs will be not a full reciprocal, I could have done that, I guess, but it would have been tough for a lot of countries. We didn’t want to do.

Again, Trump is implying that other countries will pay these tariffs, which is not true. Americans will pay them