Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday doubled down on his plan to impose sweeping tariffs on American trade partners as part of his plans to create a “manufacturing renaissance.”
Trump outlined his economic proposals in a speech in Savannah, Georgia where he promised to stop U.S. businesses from shipping jobs overseas and to take other countries’ jobs and factories by imposing tariffs.
The former president promised to place a 100 percent tariff on every car imported from Mexico if he is reelected to a second term in the White House.
“With the vision I’m outlining today, not only will we stop our businesses from leaving for foreign lands, but under my leadership, we’re going to take other countries’ jobs,” Trump told supporters.
The Republican presidential nominee said he wants “German car companies to become American car companies” and build their plants in the United States.
“We’re going to take their factories—and we had it really rocking four years ago—we’re going to bring thousands and thousands of businesses and trillions of dollars in wealth back to the good ole’ USA’,” Trump said.
Trump, on the campaign trail, has proposed using tariffs on imports and other measures as part of his broader economic platform.
Just the day before, Trump threatened to slap tractor giant John Deere with a 200 percent tariff if the farm equipment supplier followed through on plans to move some production to Mexico.
“I love the company, but as you know, they’ve announced a few days ago that they’re gonna move a lot of their manufacturing business to Mexico,” Trump said at a roundtable in Pennsylvania with farmers and manufacturers Monday.
The company announced in June that it was acquiring land in Ramos, Mexico, to build a new plant.
Impact on Customers
According to the Tax Policy Center, a 100 percent tariff on imported vehicles would come close to doubling their price since most of the tax would be passed on to consumers.
Billionaire Mark Cuban has agreed that it would ultimately hurt the American consumer and criticized Trump’s plan to impose a 200 percent tariff on John Deere.
“This Lack of Understanding of Business is insane,” Cuban said in a post on social media platform X.
“Put a 200 percent tariff on the American company moving some production to Mexico. But tariff Chinese manufacturers 10 or 20 percent, so that the Chinese products will be cheaper to sell in the U.S. than the American company.”
Cuban called Trump’s plan a “good way to destroy a legendary American company and increase costs to American buyers.”
By contrast, Cuban praised Vice President Kamala Harris as being pro-business. Cuban, along with nearly 100 other top business leaders, recently endorsed the Democratic presidential nominee.
Other Proposals
In his speech, Trump also pledged to appoint a special ambassador to entice foreign manufacturers to the United States and offer them access to federal land.
He also doubled down on his support of “substantial tariffs” on imported goods and proposed special manufacturing zones on federal land “with ultra-low taxes and regulations for American producers.”
Trump also called for fewer environmental regulations around manufacturing.
“We’re going to use our resources to our benefit,” Trump said. “And it’ll be clean and environmentally perfect so that … Americans can manufacture everything that we need, the resources we have right here, American soil. It’s got everything: it’s got the rare earth, it’s got the oil, it’s got the gas. We have everything—the only thing we don’t have is smart people leading our country.”
Trump also reiterated calls for lowering the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 15 percent for companies that make products in the United States.