PREPARE FOR APRIL 2 (Uncut) 03-31-2025

PREPARE FOR APRIL 2: What the Launch of New Aggressive Tariff Regime Means for You

Welcome back, everyone. Thank you so much for joining me. Please remember to follow the link in the description below to become a subscriber at worldaffairsandcontext.com, where you will find more content and new exclusive projects that I will be launching soon.

April the 2nd has been announced as America’s liberation day. April the 2nd was picked for a reason, in case you’re wondering. Reportedly, it was specifically selected to avoid April Fool’s Day.

So, on April the 2nd, a new tariff regime goes into effect. But today, as you know, we did something with respect to Venezuela. You heard about that.

And that will be quite important. We’ll be announcing some additional tariffs over the next few days, having to do with automobiles, cars, and having also to do a little bit with lumber down the road. Lumber and chips.

We’re going to get all those chip companies coming back. They’re already coming back without even doing it. So it’s been very good.

But we’ll be announcing some others. But for the most part, April 2nd will be a big day. With that, let’s discuss what you need to know about the new policies.

The new tariffs include a 25% additional tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico, and a 10% additional tariff on imports from China. Energy resources from Canada will have a lower, a 10% tariff. There will be additional reciprocal tariffs, as I discussed in my previous video, in great detail.

Those have not been formally announced just yet, since the plan changed several times over the course of the past several weeks. Also, the United States will include a 25% tariff on all countries that import oil from Venezuela. Additionally, I discussed this specific policy in great detail several days ago in a separate episode here on my channel.

So it is fair to be concerned, because the global economy is very interconnected. Availability of goods imported from foreign countries directly depends on the trade policies of our state. When the cost of importing those products actually increases, whether it is due to supply chain disruptions or due to tariffs, U.S. companies must pay more to ship those goods to you.

To stay profitable, these companies are likely to pass those costs on to consumers by raising prices. Yale University’s budget lab reports that increasing tariffs on China, Canada, and Mexico will result in an average American family paying anywhere between $1,600 to $2,000 more for the same exact products this year. America’s gross domestic product, or GDP, an important economic indicator that measures the value of goods and services produced in a country, would also shrink, and it would shrink by an estimated $100 billion to $175 billion on an annual basis.

The economic impact of tariffs is simple accounting. It is not driven by any political considerations, by the way. In my video yesterday, I explained that the economic slowdown and an uptick in inflation point to the possibility of stagflation even before these tariffs go into effect.

If you haven’t already watched that video on stagflation, I highly recommend that you do. I think it may help you sort of understand and put these things in perspective. With these tariffs factored in, it is difficult to predict just how challenging things may become for an average U.S. consumer as prices rise, and availability of products might actually be limited if imports are scaled back, and a decline in demand and business activity may further slow the economy.

So, as you can see, there is a very strong link between all of these factors. That is definitely something to be aware of as Liberation Day is upon us. During the most recent press conference, Fed Chair Jerome Powell commented on the expected effect of tariffs.

And even though Powell has lost a portion of his credibility as he tried to assure us for years that inflation is transitory, he did say something that I would agree with. He said, I do think with the arrival of the tariff inflation, further progress on fighting inflation may be delayed. One doesn’t really need a degree in economics to see that any progress on inflation is now highly, highly questionable.

Despite Liberation Day being quite a celebratory in its name, recent polls show that Americans are not really excited about the U.S. economy becoming liberated. The conference board, a nonpartisan research group that surveys Americans monthly on how the economy is doing, reports that consumer confidence has slipped to its lowest level since January of 2021. As confidence rating declined, consumers’ expectations dropped, reaching their lowest level in 12 years, meaning even during the 2019 health crisis, consumers were far more optimistic about the U.S. economy than they are right now.

As a quick and easy example, Americans are now panicking because car prices are expected to surge once these tariffs go into effect. In the United States, you really need a car to get around, and it is viewed as a necessity, not exactly a form of luxury. According to Reuters, Cox Automotive projects the tariffs could add $3,000 to $6,000 to vehicle costs.

Although the tariffs are aimed at boosting U.S. manufacturing by stirring buyers to American-made cars, automobiles built in the United States factories will still be hit with tariffs. That’s because there’s no such thing as an all-American car. All 10.2 million cars built in the U.S. factories last year were built with a significant number of imported parts, mainly from Canada and Mexico.

The average domestic content is conservatively estimated at only 50 percent and is likely closer to 40 percent, said a fact sheet that was published by the Trump administration. Thus, an American car that costs $40,000 to build could be hit with $5,000 in tariffs because half of its parts come from other countries. I hope that this quick video helped clarify some points related to the new trade policies that go into effect on April the 2nd.

Please consider becoming a subscriber and supporting my work at worldaffairsandcontext.com. It is very much appreciated. Thank you so much for watching. Remember to show your support, like, subscribe, and share.

Follow me on social media platforms linked in the description below, and I will see you back here soon. Take care.