April 3: 'Twas a Day of Liberation

Loomer gets NSC officials fired; Amazon/OnlyFans bid on TikTok; RFK fires Fauci's wife

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The Big Story

My fellow Americans, this is Liberation Day—waiting for a long time. April 2, 2025, will forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn, the day America’s destiny was reclaimed, and the day that we began to make America wealthy again.

So proclaimed President Donald Trump yesterday in what will surely be remembered as a pivotal speech of his presidency. Typically, a liberation day is a national holiday meant to celebrate the liberation of a country. So what is Trump’s “Liberation Day” liberating us from, exactly? According to Trump:

Our country has been looted, pillaged, and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike. American steelworkers, auto workers, farmers, and skilled craftsmen suffered gravely. They watched in anguish as foreign leaders have stolen our jobs, foreign cheaters have ransacked our factories, and foreign scavengers have torn apart our once beautiful American dream.

The centerpiece of Trump’s Liberation Day was the announcement of a 10% global tariff on all imports to the United States, coupled with a complex web of “reciprocal tariffs” targeting more than 180 countries. These reciprocal tariffs are tailored to each nation, ostensibly mirroring the trade imbalances or barriers the United States faces abroad. According to Forbes, this marks the most extensive tariff package launched by the United States in decades—a high-stakes gamble that could either catapult the nation into a new era of prosperity or, as critics warn, trigger an economic catastrophe. The administration’s goal is clear: to dismantle what it sees as unfair global trade agreements and rebuild America’s industrial might. But the path forward is fraught with uncertainty, and reactions have been as polarized as they are intense.

The financial markets wasted no time in registering their verdict. This morning, stocks plummeted, with CNBC reporting a 4% drop in the broad market index. The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 1,200 points—a 3% decline—while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite cratered by 5%. The American business community, as reported by The New York Times, is equally divided. Some see the tariffs as a reckless move that could spiral into stagflation or the end of the American economy as we know it. Others hail them as a long-overdue stand against decades of trade imbalances, a bold step toward restoring the nation’s industrial base and securing lasting prosperity.

“This is catastrophic for American families,” said Matt Priest, president and CEO of the Footwear Distributors and Retailers of America, to the Times. “We had hoped the president would take a more targeted approach, but these broad tariffs will only drive up costs, reduce product quality, and weaken consumer confidence.”

Nick Iacovella, executive vice president at the Coalition for a Prosperous America, said the tariffs could reindustrialize the United States and create working-class jobs, adding, “It absolutely cements President Trump’s legacy that he is trying to usher in a new golden age of economy production and prosperity.”

The full list of reciprocal tariffs can be viewed against those countries’ tariffs charged to the United States in the chart below:

What’s important to note here is that these countries’ declared tariffs policy may not actually be reflected in the chart. This has led some critics of the policy to condemn the administration’s tariffs calculations as “fake”; but several economic analysts have mapped out the math behind these percentage figures. Tariffs are taxes charged on goods imported to the United States, frequently passed on to consumers by companies. Financial journalist James Surowiecki noted that the tariff rate for other nations Trump pointed to is not related to a tariff American manufacturers pay; it’s a calculation using the trade deficit. For example, according to World Population View, the U.S. trade deficit with Japan is about $62.6 billion, and the total amount of exports from the United States to Japan is $135.8 billion. Dividing the former figure by the latter figure gives a result of 0.46, which reflects the reciprocal tariffs placed on Japan as of Liberation Day. Economic analyst Alan Cole maps out the mathematics behind these tariffs calculations fairly clearly in the X post below:

The Scroll contacted international trade lawyer and writer Nicholas Phillips to explain the confusing math behind the administration’s tariffs calculations, as well as what he believes the overall goal of the Liberation Day tariffs to be.

Phillips believes that using the trade deficit as the tariffs calculations might expose the administration to criticism, because what the United States needs is an overall balancing of trade deficits, whereas this drives every single bilateral trade we have toward balance, which isn’t altogether necessary to achieve the administration’s goals. “You might run a bilateral deficit with any given country, but if you run a surplus with another country, like, you don’t really necessarily have to care about the bilateral deficit,” says Phillips.

This fact leads Phillips to believe that there are two related but distinguished goals with the Liberation Day tariffs. The global 10% tariff, he says, will indeed be used to encourage reshoring manufacturing to come back to the United States. The reciprocal tariffs, however, are negotiation tools for creating better trade agreements between the United States and its partners. Phillips told us:

Instead of attempting to mathematically add up all of our trading partners’ trade barriers, like tariffs, regulatory measures, and currency manipulations, the administration is saying, “You have a trade deficit with us. We’re going to hit you with a tariff that recognizes the size of that deficit, which we will now negotiate over.” I think they’re just using the deficit as a proxy to express that they don’t like that we’re running deficits with all these countries. Now is the time to negotiate.

Notably, Canada and Mexico, bound by the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), are exempt from these tariffs—a hint that favorable trade deals could spare other nations as well.

This exemption underscores a broader challenge: loopholes in existing agreements. In a recent Commonplace article, Phillips highlighted how countries like China exploit the USMCA by shifting production to Mexico, exporting goods duty-free to the United States as if they were Mexican-made. To counter this, Phillips and others, like Tablet’s Lee Smith, advocate for targeting the manufacturer’s origin (like China,) not just the production site, and imposing steep punitive tariffs—up to 60%—on nations facilitating such workarounds.

Another layer of complexity is the U.S. dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency, which artificially inflates its value. This boosts American purchasing power but makes U.S. exports pricier abroad. Phillips estimates that if the dollar is overvalued by 25%, it acts as a 25% tax on American producers and a 25% subsidy on imports. Despite persistent trade deficits, which should weaken the dollar, this hasn’t happened—fueling the administration’s claims of manipulation. Trump’s new Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Stephen Miran has floated the “Mar-a-Lago Accord”—a plan to devalue the dollar through multilateral agreements or unilateral measures, like fees on foreign treasury holdings. Sylvia Ma of MyNews summarized the plan as follows:

The first option is a multilateral agreement—in other words, a Mar-a-Lago Accord—in which major economies such as China, Japan and the European Union agree to sell dollar assets and swap short-term US treasuries for century bonds. This dual mechanism would weaken the dollar by increasing its supply while containing yield spikes. The US could offer other countries tariff relief and security guarantees to secure their compliance with the plan, Miran suggested. If the US fails to achieve multilateral cooperation, it could take unilateral action to drive reserve managers away from the dollar, such as by imposing fees on foreign treasury holdings.

While Liberation Day might yield feelings closer to confusion and uncertainty about the future than anything like liberation, Wall Street is signaling doom, likely in a concerted attempt to dilute support of Trump’s tariffs policies. Phillips doesn’t believe that Trump is deliberately trying to tank the stock market, pointing out the shortsightedness of Wall Street analysts when it comes to measuring the overall quality of life in the United States:

The stock market was at all-time highs while the deindustrialization of America was taking place. Stock market valuations are about short-term cost structures, not long-term prosperity. The investors’ time horizon is, “Did your quarterly costs go up?” and that’s it.

Despite the panic that has saturated the country as the stock market dips, Phillips closed the conversation with a positive reading of Liberation Day. “The theory, to me, is sound,” he said. “If they pull it off, we will be a more prosperous country.”

Perhaps our senior policy analyst summed it up best: Trump’s choice was between managed decline or an entirely new economic theory, and he chose the latter. “It’s not ‘choose between today’s wonderful prosperity and uncertainty,’” said our analyst. “It’s ‘choose between a morphine drip and life itself.’”

Read the rest of Phillips’ article here: https://commonplace.org/2025/03/25/no-pain-no-gain-on-canada-and-mexico-tariffs/

—Adam Lehrer

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The Rest

→President Trump fired several senior National Security Council officials at the behest of far-right X poster Laura Loomer, according to The New York Times. Loomer reportedly met with Trump at the White House yesterday with opposition research on a slew of NSC officials, at least three of whom were fired today. The chief revelation of that research, according to Axios, was that the officials held (we’ll give you two guesses) ... “neoconservative views.” Loomer blasted the men before the president in the company of National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who runs the agency. Loomer, who is viewed as a little too kooky even by the standards of the president’s most staunchly far-right allies, is said to be a part of an effort by Trump’s allies to disparage the administration’s foreign policy officials said by the allies to be “too hawkish.”

→With a weekend deadline for TikTok to find new ownership rapidly approaching, Amazon and a consortium led by OnlyFans founder Tim Stokely have both entered the ring with massive bids to purchase the video-sharing platform, according to Reuters. President Trump said last month that the administration was in talks with four groups about a potential purchase of the platform, but did not identify those groups. Other potential buyers include private equity firm Blackstone, which is joining ByteDance’s non-Chinese shareholders led by Susquehanna International Group and General Atlantic to make a bid, and U.S. venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, which is in talks to add outside funding to buy out TikTok’s Chinese investors as part of a bid led by Oracle.

→Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired Anthony Fauci’s wife, Christine Grady, and reassigned at least three Fauci allies at the National Institutes of Health on Tuesday to purge the government of senior officials involved in the government’s development and distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to Politico. The removals effectively gut the NIH’s infectious-disease office of its leadership and eliminate important roles in the Food and Drug Administration. Several NIH leaders were forced to accept reassignment at outposts in states such as Alaska, while some were asked to step down altogether.

→Quote of the Day

The premise of this hearing, the so-called censorship industrial complex, is a fiction that has not only had profound impacts on my life and safety, but on our national security. More alarmingly, this fiction is itself suppressing speech and stymieing critical research that protects our country. I want to acknowledge the irony that we’re having this discussion as we witness an assault on the First Amendment we have not seen in decades. The Trump administration has directed far more egregious violations of our constitution than the imagined actions of the Biden administration on which this hearing is premised.

That’s Nina Jankowicz, head of the American Sunlight Project, a pro-democracy organization, speaking at a House foreign relations subcommittee meeting held to examine the existence of an alleged “censorship industrial complex,” the subject of yesterday’s Big Story, which Republicans claim was established to stifle right-wing views on social media rather than combat foreign propaganda, as officially stated, according to The Guardian. Jankowicz’s claims appear rich considering that the Biden administration’s conspiracy to silence antagonistic speech on Twitter was already exposed years ago by the revelations of the Twitter Files.

→Video of the Day

A relentlessly violent tornado outbreak has swept across the South and Midwest since Tuesday, destroying homes, claiming two lives, and leaving communities destroyed, according to the Weather Channel. Some of the tornadoes have been recorded at EF3 or stronger.

→The White House rejected reports Wednesday that Elon Musk would be leaving the Department of Government Efficiency, according to the Washington Examiner. In a post on X, Rachel Bade, Politico Capitol bureau chief and senior Washington columnist, said that Musk would be “stepping back in the coming weeks from his current role.” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called those claims, which we reported yesterday, “garbage”:

→Columbia student activists chained themselves to a school gate Wednesday, chanting “Globalize the intifada!” according to The Washington Free Beacon. The four protesters, none of whom wore masks, secured themselves to the St. Paul’s Chapel gate, which serves as the university’s entrance, with several students wearing masks behind them. Their signs displayed several upbeat, not-at-all-threatening messages like “Pigs aren’t kosher,” “Israel bombs, Columbia pays,” and “ICE off campus.” They claimed their purpose was to secure the names of trustees who “collaborated” with the Trump administration in the events leading up to the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil. A group of prospective students toured the campus during the administration with their families, at which point the protesters chanted the classic Palestinian resistance line: “There is only one solution, intifada revolution.”

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