Last Updated on February 28, 2025
President Donald Trump is exerting his negotiating power on the world stage by gaining potentially “substantial tariff income,” according to Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. The Trump administration official revealed on Bloomberg Television on Friday that Mexico has proposed matching U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports.
“Much of the tariff income could be substantial. We will see where the tariffs finally end up. The China tariffs, since they were put on, have brought in substantial revenue. They continue to bring in substantial revenue,” Bessent said.
“President Trump has talked about reciprocal tariffs. If tariffs are his favorite word, I would say ‘reciprocal’ has gotten to be his second-favorite word. And in the reciprocal tariffs, you actually don’t know the path of what’s going to happen…because the idea there is, that if Europe has a 12 and a half percent tax on OUR cars, we can either put a 12 and a half percent tax on theirs, or the tariffs could get dropped altogether. So, it’s going to be very path-dependent. But I would expect that with the ten-year scoring that the CBO likes to use, that there could be substantial tariff income over the next ten years,” Bessent explained.
“I do think one very interesting proposal that the Mexican government has made is perhaps matching the U.S. on our China tariffs. I think it would be a nice gesture if the Canadians did it also so, in a way, we could have fortress North America from the flood of Chinese imports that’s coming out of the most unbalanced economy in the history of modern times,” Bessent revealed.
President Trump recently laid out his “Reciprocal Tariff” strategy, which would impose a tariff on “whatever Countries charge the United States of America…”
Trump is still holding his tariff cards close to his chest, as any master negotiator would. According to his Treasury Secretary, Trump’s overall tariff strategy seems to be working.
