Trump has repeatedly declared April 2 “Liberation Day” — the day he’ll roll out a new set of sweeping, possibly universal tariffs. Trump himself said on March 30 that tariffs will “start with all countries,” though National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett previously said that they would target a much smaller set of countries. It is not yet known exactly how high the new import taxes will be.

• Fox Business host Taylor Riggs: April 2 is “Liberation Day in America.” Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy said, “April 2 is going to be a big day,” because Trump is “putting a lot of his chips on April 2. Liberation Day.” Riggs and Doocy then discussed Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 3/20/25]
• Doocy: “Things are changing. And the linchpin is the tariffs because April 2 is Liberation Day, when the reciprocal tariffs are going to kick in across the world.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 3/20/25]
• Fox host Jesse Watters celebrated announcements of several investments in the U.S. and credited them to Trump’s tariffs: “Trump says April 2 will be ‘Liberation Day.’ That's when reciprocal tariffs go up. American workers have been held hostage for far too long.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 3/21/25]

• Fox Business’ The Big Money Show hyped “Liberation Day” with an “Investing in America” graphic. Co-host Jackie DeAngelis said: “Coming up, Liberation Day is coming — why April 2’s reciprocal tariff deadline has companies making some moves and pretty quick. We’re going to tell you the latest major company making commitments to America next.” [Fox Business, The Big Money Show, 3/21/25]

  

• The Big Money Show again credited Trump’s upcoming “Liberation Day” for “drawing historic investment.” DeAngelis opened the show by saying: “Markets are surging today with Liberation Day just over a week away, the administration rolling out a targeted, strategic approach to tariffs, one that is rattling foreign governments but sending confidence through the roof right here at home.” She continued: “Trump's trade hardball might not be popular with the globalists at the World Trade Organization, but here at home it's drawing historic investment. The latest? South Korea’s Hyundai to announce a $20 billion U.S. investment onshoring that includes a $5 billion steel plant in Louisiana.” [Fox Business, The Big Money Show, 3/24/25]
• Fox & Friends First co-host Todd Piro on “Liberation Day”: “That sounds like the name of a movie.” Two days later, Piro said: “President Trump announcing a new 25% tariff on all auto imports, which will take effect next Wednesday, or as I like to say in my movie voice, Liberation Day.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends First, 3/25/25, 3/27/25]
• Fox Business’ The Bottom Line hyping “Liberation Day”: “The world is America’s oyster now, and we’re packing cocktail sauce.” Co-host Dagen McDowell continued: “President Trump putting America first both at home and abroad.” The show aired a “countdown to Liberation Day” graphic announcing that it was six days away. The co-hosts then mocked Canada for an advertising campaign explaining to Americans that tariffs are taxes paid by American consumers. [Fox Business, The Bottom Line, 3/27/25]
• Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo began an interview with Kevin Hassett by saying: “Now, President Trump's reciprocal tariffs are set to take effect this upcoming Wednesday, April 2, on a wide array of foreign imports, a day the president has dubbed ‘Liberation Day.’” During the segment, Hassett said the tariffs were part of Trump’s “long-run vision of a golden age of America,” but said, “I can't give you any forward-looking guidance on what's going to happen this week. The president is — has got a heck of a lot of analysis before him, and he's going to make the right choice, I'm sure.” [Fox News, Sunday Morning Futures, 3/30/25]
• Fox contributor Nicole Saphier: “Get ready for Liberation Day. President Trump’s long-awaited tariffs finally go into effect on Wednesday, and his administration is promising big things for America.” [Fox News, The Big Weekend Show, 3/30/25]
• Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade: “President Trump says this Wednesday is Liberation Day, as his set of reciprocal tariffs designed to protect homegrown companies are ready to go into effect.” Later in the segment, co-host Lawrence Jones endorsed the tariffs, saying: “I don't understand how anyone can disagree with the reciprocal. They got a tariff on us, we respond in kind. I'm also questioning former presidents, why we hadn't done that before.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 3/31/25]
• Fox’s David Asman: “A huge week for the economy as President Trump gears up for what he calls ‘Liberation Day,’ placing tariffs on imported goods.” [Fox Business, The Evening Edit, 3/31/25]

Tariffs are a tax on imports from other countries, paid for by people or businesses that import foreign goods for domestic consumption. As explained in detail by the Cato Institute and supported by other research, “US consumers, including business consumers and particularly poorer consumers, have shouldered the burden of US tariffs through higher prices and reduced export growth.”

• Tax Foundation Vice President of Federal Tax Policy Erica York explained that Trump’s second term tariffs “are far more extreme than his first” term tariffs, nearly six times bigger, and enacted over a much shorter time period. York explained: “1.0 tariffs hit $380 billion of imports (1.8% of GDP) over 2018-2019, focused on China. 2.0 tariffs will hit from $1.4-$3.2 trillion of imports (4.6%-10.7% of GDP) over his first 100 days, focused on friends.” [Twitter/X, 3/31/25]
• Washington Post White House economics reporter Jeff Stein, noting White House aide Peter Navarro’s explanation that “Trump's tariffs will raise $600 billion per year, or $6 trillion over a 10 year period,” questioned whether the tariffs could be “the biggest tax hike in US history.” Stein added that Navarro’s statement “seems to reflect our reporting that Trump wants to go absolutely enormous on the tariffs, regardless of short-term economic consequences.” In a Washington Post article the previous day, Stein reported that “Trump is pushing senior advisers to go bigger on tariff policy as they prepare for what the White House has called ‘Liberation Day.’” [Twitter/X, 3/30/25; The Washington Post, 3/29/25]
• Stein: “Wall Street Journal now confirming our reporting that Trump is pushing for a universal across the board tariff” of “up to 20%.” Stein linked to a Journal article stating that Trump said his tariffs “would target ‘essentially all’ U.S. trading partners with tariffs of some kind.” The report continued: “Exactly how that will happen remains unclear. In recent days, advisers have considered imposing global tariffs of up to 20% that would hit virtually all U.S. trading partners. Trump and his team for months promoted such a plan on the campaign trail, before the president publicly ditched it in favor of a so-called reciprocal tariff plan.” Another Post article from Stein reported that “White House aides have drafted a proposal to impose tariffs of about 20 percent on most imports to the United States.” [Twitter/X, 3/30/25; The Wall Street Journal, 3/30/25; The Washington Post, 4/1/25]
• Yale Budget Lab director of economics Ernie Tedeschi: If Trump implements a “20% broad tariff,” combined with other tariffs, it would “raise the effective US tariff rate to 33%, the highest since 1872.” [Twitter/X, 3/31/25]
• Manhattan Institute senior fellow Jessica Riedl: “White House promises that next week, it will impose the largest peacetime tax increase in America history outside of World War II - $6 trillion over the decade.” Riedl added in a separate post: “Here's some (@TaxFoundation) context on the White House's Peter Navarro promising a tariff tax hike that comes to 2.22% of GDP. None bigger outside of WWII.” [Twitter/X, 3/30/25, 3/30/25]

As was the case with Trump’s other recently announced tariffs, his “Liberation Day” tariffs could raise prices for American consumers and otherwise weaken the American economy. 

• The Washington Post: If “tariffs of about 20 percent on most imports to the United States” were implemented right away and faced retaliation, “the economy would almost immediately tumble into a recession that would last for more than a year, sending the jobless rate above 7 percent, according to Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s.” The Post added that Zandi described this as a “worst-case scenario.” Zandi further stated that he “sees unemployment peaking at 7.3 percent in early 2027 and remaining near 6 percent through 2028. Stocks would lose one-quarter of their value, and more than 5 million jobs would be lost by early 2027.” [The Washington Post, 4/1/25]
• Tedeschi: Trump’s new tariffs would “raise prices by 2.1-2.6% in the short-run, a loss in purchasing power equiv. to $3,400-4,200 per household annually in 2024$.” He stated that would also “shave 0.9-1pp off 2025 US real GDP growth” and “make US real GDP persistently 0.3-0.6% smaller in the long-run, equiv. to $90-180bn in 2024$.” Tedeschi added that the tariffs would “hurt households at the bottom 3x more than those at the top” and “raise food prices by 3.7%, about double the rate of recent grocery inflation.” [Twitter/X, 3/31/25, 3/31/25, 3/31/25]
• Goldman Sachs’ forecast shows higher inflation and unemployment, lower economic growth, and “a 35% chance of recession in the next 12 months, up from 20% in the prior outlook” due to Trump’s upcoming tariffs. CNBC noted that “the forecast paints a growing chance of a stagflation economy, with low growth and high inflation. The last time the U.S. saw stagflation was in the late 1970s and early ’80s.” [CNBC, 3/30/25]
• Bloomberg Economics: A “maximalist approach” from Trump on his tariffs could result “in a hit of 4% to US GDP and lifting prices by close to 2.5% over a two- to three-year period.” Bloomberg further explained: “This would be equivalent to lopping more than $1 trillion off US output, or roughly the GDP of Pennsylvania. For comparison, this would be nearly as bad as the impact of the global financial crisis — which left the economy roughly 6% smaller after 3 years than its pre-crisis trend.” [Bloomberg, 3/31/25]