President Donald Trump on Thursday announced he would impose a "reciprocal tariff" on any country that tariffs the United States.
"For the purposes of fairness," said Trump from the Oval Office.
"Whatever countries charge the United States of America, we will charge them. No more, no less."
"They charge us tax or tariff, we charge them the exact same tax or tariff."
"Nobody know what that number is unless you go by the individual country. If you look at the individual countries and look what they're charging us, in almost all cases, they're charging us vastly more."
The White House in a statement released on the heels of Trump's announcement said the United States "has been treated unfairly by trading partners, both friend and foe."
"This lack of reciprocity is one source of our country's large and persistent annual trade deficit in goods — closed markets abroad reduce United States exports and open markets at home result in significant imports," reads the statement.
Trump's administration hopes to "reduce our large and persistent annual trade deficit in goods and to address other unfair and unbalanced aspects of our trade with foreign trading partners."
The new policy is referred to as the "Fair and Reciprocal Plan," and will "ensure comprehensive fairness and balance across the international trading system by factoring in losses as a result of measures that disadvantage the United States as applied, regardless of what they are called or whether they are written or unwritten," said the White House.
Within 180 days the fiscal impacts on the US government will be assessed.
On Monday, Trump imposed 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum coming into the US. Last month he imposed an additional 10% on all Chinese exports, and Canada and Mexico are both expecting a 25% tariff on all goods in March.