President Donald Trump did not want his major tariff announcement to be a laughing matter. ‘I was going to do it April 1st but I said, “I don’t like that date,”‘ Trump said at an event with the nation’s governors in February. ‘I don’t want to take the abuse.’ Still, he flirted with the idea: ‘Should I just do April 1st?’ ‘It’s going to cost a lot of money to wait one day,’ he joked. But then he decided to turn April 2nd into a Trump-branded holiday: ‘Liberation Day’ he dubbed it.

Liberation Day is now set to become the president’s first big event in the White House’s Rose Garden of his second term. It will take place at 4 pm – to prevent a split screen moment of the announcement coinciding with markets tumbling. There are still last-minute attempts to steal Trump’s thunder, with multiple Republicans joining Democrat Tim Kaine in a resolution to end the emergency declaration Trump signed in February to implement tariffs on Canada as punishment for not doing enough to halt the flow of illegal drugs into the US.

Kentucky’s Rand Paul – who has vocally opposed the tariffs – is co-sponsoring the resolution and Susan Collins of Maine (pictured) has already said she will support it. Other Republicans, such as North Carolina’s Thom Tills, Iowa’s Chuck Grassley, are considering it, according to Politico. Collins already voiced her opposition to the tariffs ahead of Liberation Day. ‘I think imposing tariffs on Canada, which is our closest neighbor, friendly ally, is a huge mistake and will cause disruption in the economies of both countries, particularly for a state like Maine, whose economy is so integrated with Canada,’ Collins told DailyMail.com. ‘I’m not surprised that Canada would seek to strike back, and that’s going to increase costs even more for consumers.’

Trump on Tuesday night raged at Paul and Collins as well as old rival Mitch McConnell and Alaska moderate Lisa Murkowski in a late night post to Truth Social. He said he hopes the gang of four ‘will hopefully get on the Republican bandwagon, for a change, and fight the Democrats wild and flagrant push to not penalize Canada for the sale, into our Country, of large amounts of Fentanyl, by Tariffing the value of this horrible and deadly drug in order to make it more costly to distribute and buy.’ Trump warned that these turncoat Senators ‘are playing with the lives of the American people, and right into the hands of the Radical Left Democrats and Drug Cartels.’ He mocked Kaine’s bill as a ‘ploy’ by Democrats meant to ‘show and expose the weakness of certain Republicans, namely these four, in that it is not going anywhere because the House will never approve it and I, as your President, will never sign it.’

Trump then asked of them: ‘Why are they allowing Fentanyl to pour into our Country unchecked, and without penalty. What is wrong with them, other than suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, commonly known as TDS? Who can want this to happen to our beautiful families, and why?’ He then asked his MAGA movement to contact the four Senators to ‘get them to FINALLY adhere to Republican Values and Ideals.’ ‘They have been extremely difficult to deal with and, unbelievably disloyal to hardworking Majority Leader John Thune, and the Republican Party itself. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!’ Kaine, who unsuccessfully ran for vice president alongside Hillary Clinton against Trump in 2016, said he was happy to allow the GOP the chance to do the right thing and vote down a Trump tariff. “I really relish giving my Republican colleagues the chance to not just say they’re concerned, but actually take an action to stop these tariffs,” he said. On Tuesday, team Trump appeared undeterred and ready to go full speed ahead with Liberation Day.

At Tuesday’s White House briefing, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Liberation Day ‘will go down as one of the most important days in modern American history.’ The Washington Post reported Tuesday morning that Trump was likely to announce an across-the-board 20 percent tariff on most of the nation’s imports. Mark Zandi, the chief economist for Moody’s, told The Post that if that plan were to go into effect it would almost immediately trigger a recession that would last more than a year, and send the US jobless rate above 7 percent. No matter what, it will test whether Trump and his advisers’ worldview on using tariffs to bring manufacturing back stateside is accurate.

Trump’s will-he-or-won’t-he on tariffs have already created stock market turmoil, raised the odds of a recession and started to push up inflation on household items, with economic experts fearing even more price hikes . Ahead of ‘Liberation Day,’ Trump imposed a 25 percent tariff on steel and aluminum, a 20 percent tariff on shipments from China and up to 25 percent on good from Canada and Mexico that weren’t covered in the Trump-signed trade deal. Last week Trump announced a 25 percent tariff on foreign cars set to take effect on April 3. The president has also threatened to slap a 200 percent tariff on all wine and spirits from the European Union after the Europeans announced a planned 50 percent tariff on American whiskey. That move was in reaction to Trump’s 25 percent tariff on European steel and aluminum.

In addition, he’s flirted with implementing tariffs on agricultural goods, lumber, copper, computer chips, pharmaceuticals. He proposed blanket tariffs on Colombia – which he dropped. Trump also proposed blanket tariffs on the European Union, a top US ally; on Russia, over the war in Ukraine; on any country that buys fuel from Venezuela; and on BRICs nations, for wanting to develop a currency to compete with the US dollar. Trump has enacted tariffs on $800 billion worth of goods as of March 21, The Washington Post said . On the eve of Liberation Day, there was global concern about what was coming next. During the Tuesday press briefing Leavitt wouldn’t confirm the 20 percent figure – but said Trump had made a decision and that the announced tariffs would be ‘effective immediately.’

‘The president said last night he has made a decision and a determination,’ Leavitt said. ‘I don’t want to get ahead of the president. This is obviously a very big day. He’s with his trade and tariff team right now perfecting it to make sure this is a perfect deal for the American people and the American worker and you will all find out from about 24 hours from now,’ Leavitt said. On Monday night Trump had also floated ‘reciprocal’ tariffs aimed at countries that currently have steep import taxes on American products – which would represent a less extreme action than imposing a 20 percent tariff across the board. A lobbying effort has been taking place to swat these down.

Leavitt confirmed that the White House had been fielding calls from ‘quite a few countries that have called the president and have called his team in discussion about these tariffs.’ Even Fox News was skeptical, with Peter Doocy asking what would happen if MAGAnomics was wrong. ‘They’re not going to be wrong,’ Leavitt pushed back. ‘It is going to work and the president has a brilliant team of advisers who have been studying these issues for decades.’ On Capitol Hill, while some GOP senators have defended Trump’s approach to tariffs, others have been hesitant to weigh in. ‘We don’t know what we’re going to see yet, and we’ll just have to wait and see what it looks like,’ said Sen. Mike Rounds when asked about seeking exemptions. ‘Then we can make some determinations, but at this stage in the game, it’s unknown to us,’ the South Dakota Republican said.

If the tariffs do tip the US into a recession there will likely be buyers’ remorse. Trump was reelected in November after President Joe Biden didn’t do enough to curb inflation in the years following the COVID-19 economic collapse. The eventual Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, didn’t do enough to separate herself from Biden’s economic policies, allowing Trump to argue he was the better-for-the-economy candidate. The Republicans have full control of Congress currently, but economic grumbling could cost them their majorities in 2026.

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