Trump to announce sweeping tariffs on global trade partners today, calls it 'Liberation Day' for America

The new tariffs are expected to increase prices and cause an upheaval of a decades-old trade order in a bid to boost US manufacturing units while punishing other countries for what he has said are years of unfair trade practices.

Several economists have said the rolling out of the tariffs is a risky move that threatens to plunge the economy into a downturn and upend decades-old alliances.

Meanwhile, Trump has kept the world guessing and waiting with anxiety to know the details of his tariff plans, which are still being formulated, as per reports.

The details are expected to be announced at a  White House Rose Garden ceremony scheduled for 4 p.m. Eastern Time (US time

U.S. stock indexes opened sharply lower on Wednesday, extending a selloff that has erased nearly $5 trillion of value since February, Reuters reported.

The new duties will take effect immediately after Trump announces them, while a separate 25 percent global tariff on auto imports will take effect on April 3, the White House said earlier.

India impact

A day before announcing the reciprocal tariffs, Trump said that he heard India would drop tariffs on US imports substantially.

During a press briefing at the Oval Office in the White House, President Trump was asked about reciprocal tariffs that he would officially announce on April 2 and if that would drift away some of US allies.

In his response, Trump had said, "I think a lot of them will drop their tariffs because they were being done in an unfair way. They've done this for years. If you look at the European Union, they already dropped their tariffs on cars down to two-and-a-half per cent. It was announced a couple of days ago. And I think I heard just a short while ago that India will be dropping its tariffs very substantially."

However, India has not given any official confirmation on the matter.

President Trump had also denied that his reciprocal tariffs might push US allies and partners more towards China. "No, it won't," he said.

India and the US have been negotiating on a mutually beneficial trade deal even amid repeated reciprocal tariff threats by Trump.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt had also spoken about the "unfair" trade practices in India's tariff structure, highlighting how India imposes 100 percent tariffs on agricultural imports from the US.

She also mentioned similar high tariff structures by the EU (50 percent on American dairy products), Japan (700 percent on rice), and Canada (300 per cent on butter and cheese). These hinder and hurt US exports and lead to imbalances and trade deficits in the US, she said.

"This makes it virtually impossible for American products to be imported into these markets, and it puts a lot of Americans out of business and out of work over the past several decades," she had added.