Americans could pay a high price for Trump’s reciprocal tariffs

American buyers beware: President Donald Trump’s desire to get even on countries by matching tariffs they have on American goods could come at a steep cost.

American buyers beware: President Donald Trump’s desire to get even on countries by matching tariffs they have on American goods could come at a steep cost. In Trump’s view, it’s unfair for other countries to charge American imports higher tariffs than what America, in turn, charges those countries for their own exports to the United States. “Very simply, it’s if they charge us, we charge them,” Trump said Sunday. He’s set to put his words into action as soon as Tuesday, enacting reciprocal tariffs that could hit just about “every country,” he said. That would come on top of a 10% across-the-board tariff that went into effect last week on top of other tariffs on Chinese goods and stricter 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum that Trump announced Monday. The US weighted average tariff rate, which gives special consideration to countries the US imports more from, was 1.5% as of 2022, according to World Bank data. If the US matched tariff rates of other nations on American goods, that rate would increase to nearly 5%, Deutsche Bank economists estimate, based on an analysis of World Bank data for the top 10 countries that ship goods to the US. Those 10 countries as of 2022 included China, Mexico, Canada, Japan, Germany and Vietnam, accounting for 70% of the value of the goods the US imported. But in some cases, the disparity with US tariffs was much higher. For instance, in 2022, the US average tariff rate on imports from India was 3%, whereas India’s average tariff rate on imports from the US was 9.5%.