For months on the campaign trail and after taking office, President Donald Trump promised that his tariff policies would be based on a simple principle: reciprocity.
"Whatever they tax us, we will tax them," Trump told a joint session of Congress in March, outlining plans for higher tariffs on imports from much of the world. When some of those tariff rates were unveiled in early April—before being paused, amended, altered, and in some cases finally imposed—the president reiterated that point. "They're reciprocal—so whatever they charge us, we charge them," Trump said.
The White House has dropped that talking point in recent months. Even so, the executive order that invoked emergency powers to impose those tariffs still promises that they will be "reciprocal." And in courts where the Trump administration is defending the president's use of those expansive (and possibly unconstitutional) powers, the administration's attorneys continue to refer to that set of tariffs as the "reciprocal" tariffs—to distinguish them from tariffs on Canada, China, and Mexico that were imposed in February for different reasons.
