Barack Obama has ended his silence following US President Donald Trump’s latest wave of tariffs, commenting that they won’t be “good for America.”
On April 2, Trump, 78, unveiled a fresh set of tariffs targeting countries exporting goods to the United States.
He introduced a 10 percent “baseline” duty to be applied across the board, while imposing steeper rates on a group of 60 nations labeled by Trump as the country’s “worst offenders.”
Nations hit hardest include Japan (24 percent), South Africa (30 percent), and Vietnam (46 percent).
Trump made the announcement during a Rose Garden speech at the White House, calling it “Liberation Day” for the country. Now, former President Barack Obama, 63, has spoken out.
Obama, who served as the 44th US President from 2009 to 2017, appeared at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, on Thursday (April 4) to address the newly imposed tariffs.
In a conversation with College President Steven Tepper, Obama shared that he’s currently working on completing the second part of his presidential memoirs, while also taking the opportunity to discuss the state of gun laws in America.
It was only later in the discussion that he turned his attention to Trump.
“I have deep differences of opinion with my most immediate successor — who’s now president once again,” Obama said.
“There are a host of policies that we could be discussing where I have strong opinions,” he added, expressing concern that the government’s commitment to foundational values has “eroded.”
He went on to share his views on the recently introduced trade duties.
“When I watch some of what’s going on now, it does not — look, I don’t think what we just witnessed in terms of economic policy and tariffs is going to be good for America, but that’s a specific policy,” he said.
“What concerns me more,” the former president continued, “is a federal government that threatens universities if they refuse to hand over students for exercising their free speech rights.”
He added, “I am more troubled by the idea that a White House can say to law firms, ‘If you represent parties that we don’t like, we’re going to pull all our business or bar you from representing people effectively.’”
Then came a pointed eight-word reflection: “Imagine if I had done any of this?”
Obama claimed it would be “unimaginable” for the same political figures who are now silent to have accepted this kind of behavior had it come from him or past presidents.
However, he emphasized that the responsibility for change doesn’t lie with one person alone.
“It is up to all of us to fix this. It’s not going to be because somebody comes and saves you. The most important office in this democracy is the citizen, the ordinary person who says, no, that’s not right.”
He also suggested that the erosion of democratic ideals may have occurred because people became “comfortable and complacent.”
Trump, invoking his IEEPA powers, has defended the tariffs, claiming they will push Americans to choose domestic products over foreign alternatives.
“For decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike,” Trump said.
The 10 percent tariff on all foreign goods took effect on April 5.
Meanwhile, the higher, targeted tariffs on nations with the largest trade deficits with the US will begin on April 9 at 12:01 AM EDT.
According to a White House statement, the tariffs will remain active until Trump decides that the “threat posed by the trade deficit and underlying nonreciprocal treatment is satisfied, resolved, or mitigated.”