In the dining room at Mar-a-Lago on Friday night, President Donald Trump and around two dozen advisers, friends and club members sat to celebrate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Dr. Mehmet Oz. But the brimming undercurrent was excitement for “Liberation Day,” a day that could become one of the signature moments of Trump’s second term.
“He was looking forward to it. And so was Howard Lutnick, who was there. And so was Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary. They were all excited about it,” former Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who was present, told NOTUS in an interview about Trump’s planned splashy Rose Garden rollout for his new tariff program. The president, Ross said, “is very much of the view that this is the greatest thing in a long time.”
Trump is planning to unveil a program of reciprocal tariffs on Wednesday that is likely to upend decades of trade rules that have governed relationships between countries, taking his love for levies further than any modern president has. And his plan to slap tariffs on imports from America’s trading partners, despite signs that U.S. companies and farmers are already feeling pain, could lead to tumultuous weeks full of market see-sawing, ghastly looking 401Ks and even job losses as the country reorients around the new economic order.