VALSHI starts now.

Good morning.

It is Sunday, February the 16th.

I'm Ali Valshi.

President Trump is again stating his vow to impose reciprocal tariffs on America's trading partners,

possibly sparking a broader economic confrontation with our allies.

Trump says the United States, the world's largest economy is being, quote, unfairly taken advantage of by both friend and foe, end quote.

In a lengthy post on his truth social platform on Saturday, Trump defended his newly announced executive order proposing the reciprocal tariffs, writing in part, quote,

America has helped many countries throughout the years at great financial cost.

It is now time that these countries remember this and treat us fairly, a level playing field for American workers, end quote.

Trump has instructed his top advisors to come up with new tariff levels

for America's trading partners across the globe. These new levels will target trading practices

that the Trump administration deems unfair, including other countries' tariffs, taxes,

subsidies, and exchange rates. Treasury Secretary Scott Besson says there is an April 1st deadline to

devise America's new tariffs. Commerce Secretary nominee Howard Lutnik says they could be ready

to implement these tariffs the very next day. Trump has stated that the auto tariffs, which he

says could also be implemented on April 2nd, could be especially harsh on Canada.

He claims that Canada has, quote, stolen the U.S. auto industry.

And Trump is threatening tariffs of, quote, 50 or 100 percent, because we don't want their cars.

We want to make the cars in Detroit, end quote.

What Trump is missing is that American cars contain foreign-made parts with a significant amount

of those parts coming from Canada and Mexico.

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