{"id":25223,"date":"2025-04-05T13:52:22","date_gmt":"2025-04-05T13:52:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/?p=25223"},"modified":"2025-04-05T13:52:22","modified_gmt":"2025-04-05T13:52:22","slug":"obama-breaks-silence-on-trumps-controversial-tariff-plan-with-blunt-eight-word-comment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/?p=25223","title":{"rendered":"Obama breaks silence on Trump’s controversial tariff plan with blunt eight-word comment"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Barack Obama has broken his silence amid US President Donald Trump\u2019s latest round of tariffs, remaking they will not be ‘good for America’.<\/strong><\/p>\n

On April 2,\u00a0Trump<\/a>, 78, announced\u00a0a new wave of duties<\/a>\u00a0affecting countries importing goods into the\u00a0United States<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Republican leader revealed a 10 percent \u2018baseline\u2019 tax would apply globally – with higher rates for a 60-strong country list\u00a0dubbed as Trump\u2019s \u2018worst offenders\u2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Countries struck with high custom tariffs include\u00a0Japan<\/a>\u00a0(24 percent), South Africa (30 percent) and Vietnam (46 percent).<\/p>\n

The announcement came during a White House Rose Garden Address on what Trump\u00a0dubbed \u2018Liberation Day\u2019<\/a>\u00a0for the United States, and now former US President\u00a0Barack Obama<\/a>, 63, has had his say.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"Barack\"Barack<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Barack Obama has spoken out about Donald Trump’s import duties for the first time (ADRIAN DENNIS\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/cite><\/div>\n

The Democrat, who served as the 44th President of the United States between 2009 and 2017, appeared at Hamilton College in Clinton,\u00a0New York<\/a>\u00a0on Thursday (April 4) to discuss the duties.<\/p>\n

During his speech with College President Steven Tepper, Obama confirmed he was in the midst of finishing the second half of his presidential\u00a0memoirs<\/a>\u00a0and used the platform to speak out about America\u2019s gun laws.<\/p>\n

Only then did he touch on his successor, Trump.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have deep differences of opinion with my most immediate successor \u2014 who\u2019s now president once again,\u201d he\u00a0said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a host of policies that we could be discussing where I have strong opinions,\u201d Obama continued, remarking how he believes the government\u2019s commitment to strong principles has \u2018eroded\u2019.<\/p>\n

Ploughing on, the\u00a0politician<\/a>\u00a0touched on what he truly thinks about the Administration\u2019s recently-announced duties.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"Obama\"Obama<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Obama claimed Trump’s tariffs wouldn’t be ‘good’ for America (Chip Somodevilla\/Getty Images)<\/cite><\/div>\n

\u201cWhen I watch some of what\u2019s going on now, it does not \u2014 look, I don\u2019t think what we just witnessed in terms of economic policy and tariffs is going to be good for America, but that\u2019s a specific policy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m more deeply concerned with a federal government that threatens universities if they don\u2019t give up students who are exercising their right to free speech,\u201d the father-of-two continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am more troubled by the idea that a White House can say to law firms, \u2018If you represent parties that we don\u2019t like, we\u2019re going to pull all our business or bar you from representing people effectively.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, he issued a telling eight-word remark on the subject: \u201cImagine if I had done any of this?\u201d<\/p>\n

Obama alleged that it would be \u2018unimaginable\u2019 that the \u2018same parties that are silent now would have tolerated behavior like that\u2019 from him while he or his predecessors were in.<\/p>\n

However, he added that it isn\u2019t up to one person to \u2018fix\u2019 the current government goings on.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is up to all of us to fix this. It\u2019s not going to be because somebody comes and saves you. The most important office in this democracy is the citizen, the ordinary person who says, no, that\u2019s not right.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do think one of the reasons that our commitment to democratic ideals has eroded is that we got pretty comfortable and complacent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump, who used his IEEPA authority to pass the tariffs, believes the new levies will encourage US consumers to buy more American goods instead of reaching for imports.<\/p>\n

“For decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike,” he said.<\/p>\n

The 10 percent tariff on all countries came into effect today (April 5).<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the individualized reciprocal higher tariff on the countries with \u2018which the United States has the largest trade deficits\u2019 are set to come into play on April 9 at 12.01 EDT.<\/p>\n

A White House address\u00a0states<\/a>\u00a0that the tariffs will remain in effect until Trump determines the \u2018threat posed by the trade deficit and underlying nonreciprocal treatment is satisfied, resolved, or mitigated\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Barack Obama has broken his silence amid US President Donald Trump\u2019s latest round of tariffs, remaking they will not be ‘good for America’. On April 2,\u00a0Trump, 78, announced\u00a0a … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25224,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25223"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25225,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25223\/revisions\/25225"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}