Red, white and bruised: World braces for battery of Trump tariffs on Wednesday

After spending more than two years teasing tariffs, tomorrow is the big reveal: the moment U.S. President Donald Trump unveils the full scope of his protectionist trade policy.

He's calling it Liberation Day and he's planning to celebrate it Wednesday afternoon in a splashy 4 p.m. ET event in the White House Rose Garden.

"[This] will go down as one of the most important days in modern American history," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

To skeptics, it's making history for all the wrong reasons.

The global economy, already jittery, will be on a knife's edge awaiting specifics of this plan, which could impose broader U.S. tariffs than anytime since the Great Depression.

The White House boldly insists these tariffs will achieve several simultaneous goals: raise revenues, pay for tax cuts and force companies to build in the U.S.

The stock market isn't convinced — it's lost all its gains since the election. Consumer sentiment has plunged. And Capitol Hill is getting anxious.

Here's one reason for the consternation: The most elemental details of Trump's plan are still in flux. On the very eve of the announcement, there were contradictory leaks in U.S. media.

Will this be a global tariff of 20 per cent? Or will it be several smaller tariffs that penalize specific actions of different countries? Members of Trump's team were still debating the details this week.

Then there's the question of what happens to previously announced tariffs — will they disappear, or be stacked onto these, meaning a tariff atop a tariff?

Whatever happens, the auto industry already faces a crisis, according to one representative. Flavio Volpe, head of Canada's main auto-parts lobby group, says the industry's profit margins would be wiped out, several times over, by tariffs already scheduled to take effect Wednesday, apart from any new ones Trump plans to announce.

"It will shut down the industry within a week. On both sides of the border," said Volpe, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association.

"The math doesn't work. That's why it's all going to shut down.… We may need to prove that the math doesn't work, for the White House to reverse course." 

For those keeping score, Trump has already imposed duties of 25 per cent on many Canadian and Mexican products; of 10 per cent on energy; 25 per cent on steel and aluminum — used by manufacturers, including car companies — and now a 25 per cent duty on vehicles assembled outside the U.S., plus duties on some parts, with the threat of more parts being added later.