Bessent To Tariffed Countries: ‘Do Not Retaliate’

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent offered some advice to countries getting slammed with tariffs from the Trump administration — “do not retaliate.” Those words come on the heels of President Donald Trump announcing…

Sandra RhodesApr 3, 20252 min read

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Mexico, Canada and China, are being hit with 25%

Tariffs

. However, products under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement are exempt.

“The Tariffs will be not a full reciprocal. I could have done that, I guess,” Trump said. “But it would have been tough for a lot of countries.”

Bessent said the goal is “long-term economic growth.”

“I say that what we are doing is, we’re setting the stage for long-term economic growth, that we were on our way to a financial crisis,” Bessent said. “I used to teach a history of financial crises. And with that gigantic government spending, it was unsustainable.”

“You look back in 1998, you look back in 2007, … it looked great right before everything collapsed,” Bessent said. “We have taken us off that trajectory and we are putting ourselves back onto a sound trajectory.”

Tariffs for others include 20% on the European Union, 24% on Japan and 32% on Taiwan.

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“These Tariffs will remain in effect until such a time as President Trump determines that the threat posed by the trade deficit and underlying nonreciprocal treatment is satisfied, resolved, or mitigated,” according to a release from the Trump administration, per Fox News.