“We have to do that,” President Trump said in an interview on Fox’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”
The Washington Post first reported that the Trump campaign is considering a theoretical 60% China tariff plan.
The former president said Sunday it could go even higher, “probably higher than that.”
The former president said he would impose a flat 10% tariff on all U.S. imports, despite widespread criticism that it could harm consumers outside of China.
President Trump’s only opponent, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, criticized the proposed policy’s impact on American pocketbooks.
“What Donald Trump is trying to do is raise spending for every household by $2,600 a year,” Haley said in a January interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” He spoke while citing the data.
His disapproval reflects concerns among Wall Street investors who fear that another trade war with China could destabilize markets again.
Starting in 2018, President Trump began imposing additional tariffs on China worth $250 billion. What followed was a years-long back-and-forth economic war that disrupted global trade dynamics, and the country hit back at the United States with its own tariffs.
President Trump’s trade war with China has cost Americans an estimated $195 billion since 2018, according to the American Action Forum, a conservative think tank. The economic war has also led to the loss of more than 245,000 jobs in the United States, according to the U.S.-China Business Council.
At the time, Deutsche Bank estimated that the trade war had hemorrhaged trillions of dollars to the stock market.
Additionally, the tariff dispute has left the United States and China, once each other’s largest trading partners, in an unstable geopolitical situation. President Joe Biden has sought to warm up icy relations throughout his administration.
President Trump attacked Biden for placating China, while at the same time expressing favorable feelings toward China’s authoritarian president, Xi Jinping.
“I really like President Xi,” Trump said Sunday. “He was a really good friend in my day.”
President Trump has praised Xi in the past for his ironclad control over the government and people. President Trump said in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity in December that if he were re-elected to a second term, he would be a dictator “from day one.”
Trump later claimed in an interview broadcast Sunday that he intended to be a “dictator” on his first day in office, or “day one,” but only for one day. Nevertheless, the comments alarmed election experts and angered opponents.