Trump’s complaints about overseas tariffs ignore some of the U.S.’s own

On Wednesday , the president is scheduled to reveal his plan to impose “reciprocal” tariffs on U.S. trading partners.

The president is correct when he says that many nations impose much higher tariffs on American products than the United States levies on their goods.

But today ’s tariffs were not forced upon the US . government.

They resulted from decades of negotiations that involved hard bargaining among diplomats.

The U.S. has run a deficit in its merchandise trade since 1975 , but it has consistently sold more services to the rest of the world than it has imported.

The Uruguay Round established the World Trade Organization established in Uruguay in Uruguay .

The United States last year exported more than $1 trillion worth of services, enjoying a $300 billion trade surplus.

But Detroit soon grew accustomed to churning out profitable pickups in a protected domestic market. “We were in a spat with Europe in the 1960s . They did something on chickens. We retaliated by raising the tariffs on pickup trucks,” said Bown , the former State Department economist. “And then that’s been at 25 percent ever since.”.