As my colleague Becca Lower reported, President Donald Trump took to the White House Rose Garden to declare "Liberation Day," for America with a plan for reciprocal tariffs with foreign nations and an executive order signing ceremony in front of his cabinet and other assembled guests. 

Trump gave remarks, which for him were actually brief; but this portion of his speech stood out:

In the coming days, there will be complaints from the globalists, and the outsourcers, and special interests, and the Fake News, always the Fake News will always complain. But, never forget, every prediction our opponents made about trade for the last 30 years has been proven totally wrong. They were wrong about NAFTA, they were wrong about China, they were wrong about the Trans Pacific Partnership, which would have been a disaster if I didn't terminate it. If I didn't terminate that, United Autoworkers, you would have had no jobs in this country. You would have had no jobs. It was all going to other countries. In my first term, they said tariffs would crash the economy. Instead, we built the greatest economy in the history of the world. And again, I have great respect for President Xi of China, great respect for China, but they were taking tremendous advantage of us. And, I commend them for that. I say, hey, if you can get away with it, that's okay. But, you know, they understand exactly what's happening and they probably, most of them are saying it's about time they did something. But they're going to fight, they're going fight, everyone going's to fight. I say to the leaders, look you gotta take care of your country, but we have to start taking care of our country now. We can't do what we've been doing for the last 50 years...     

WATCH:

.@POTUS: "In the coming days, there will be complaints from the globalists, the outsourcers, special interests, and Fake News... Never forget that every prediction our opponents made about trade for the last 30 years has been proven totally wrong. They were wrong about NAFTA,… pic.twitter.com/45IpfY1MOi

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 2, 2025

Trump pretty much outlined what I have observed my entire adult life. America is supposed to be this premiere economic superpower that somehow gets the short end of the stick—or at least our people do, while foreign nations get incentives, aid, and things handed to them without giving anything in return. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is the most well-documented example of this. 

From the Economic Policy Institute in 2003:

[...]NAFTA tilted the economic playing field in favor of investors, and against workers and the environment, resulting in a hemispheric “race to the bottom” in wages and environmental quality.

This race to the bottom was engineered by then-President George H.W. Bush, and co-signed by every Republican and Democrat president from Clinton, who signed it into law, to G.W. Bush, to Obama. Ten years later, a NAFTA post-mortem by the Council on Hemispheric Affairs made the failure and the cost even more clear:

The combination of increased imports from Mexico and a growing trade deficit have led to job losses, mostly in high-wage, non-college-educated manufacturing positions, in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Colombia.(9) When these displaced American workers later re-enter the job market, they find difficulty securing new jobs and often have to settle for markedly lower wages. As of March 2011, the United States has lost approximately 700,000 jobs due to disruptions in supply chains brought about by NAFTA.(10)

If Trump's whole tariff policy can be boiled down to one concept, it is: "Not this way. Not any more." Trump is intent on doing things differently, restoring a model that once built the nation, before taxation and a bloated and regulatory-ridden government tore it down. 

What most of these so-called experts who were the brain trusts behind NAFTA and the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) really feel is not shame at their failure and America's demise, but resentment that Trump is attempting a old/new strategy and in some ways, swinging for the fences, while all they did was sell out America's sweat equity, ingenuity and might, while setting us up for bankruptcy.