WASH­ING­TON (AP) — Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump yes­ter­day de­clared a 10% base­line tax on im­ports from all coun­tries and high­er tar­iff rates on dozens of na­tions that run trade sur­plus­es with the Unit­ed States, threat­en­ing to up­end much of the ar­chi­tec­ture of the glob­al econ­o­my and trig­ger broad­er trade wars.

Trinidad and To­ba­go was among the Cari­com mem­bers slapped with a 10% base­line tax. How­ev­er, Guyana was hit with the high­est tar­iff in the re­gion at 38%. T&T’s neigh­bours Venezuela, mean­while, are fac­ing a 15% tar­iff.

“It’s our de­c­la­ra­tion of in­de­pen­dence. We will es­tab­lish a min­i­mum base­line tar­iff of 10%,” Trump said at an event in the White House Rose Gar­den.

Trump held up a chart while speak­ing at the White House, show­ing the Unit­ed States would charge a 34% tax on im­ports from Chi­na, a 20% tax on im­ports from the Eu­ro­pean Union, 25% on South Ko­rea, 24% on Japan and 32% on Tai­wan.

The pres­i­dent used ag­gres­sive rhetoric to de­scribe a glob­al trade sys­tem that the US helped to build af­ter World War II, say­ing “our coun­try has been loot­ed, pil­laged, raped, plun­dered” by oth­er na­tions.

Trump de­clared a na­tion­al eco­nom­ic emer­gency to launch the tar­iffs, ex­pect­ed to pro­duce hun­dreds of bil­lions in an­nu­al rev­enues. He has promised that fac­to­ry jobs will re­turn to the Unit­ed States as a re­sult of the tax­es, but his poli­cies risk a sud­den eco­nom­ic slow­down as con­sumers and busi­ness­es could face sharp price hikes on au­tos, clothes and oth­er goods.

“Tax­pay­ers have been ripped off for more than 50 years. But it is not go­ing to hap­pen any­more,” Trump said.

Trump was ful­fill­ing a key cam­paign promise as he im­posed what he called “rec­i­p­ro­cal” tar­iffs on trade part­ners, act­ing with­out Con­gress through the 1977 In­ter­na­tion­al Emer­gency Pow­ers Act in an ex­tra­or­di­nary at­tempt to both break and ul­ti­mate­ly re­shape Amer­i­ca’s trad­ing re­la­tion­ship with the world.

The pres­i­dent’s high­er rates would hit for­eign en­ti­ties that sell more goods to the Unit­ed States than they buy, mean­ing the tar­iffs could stay in place for some time as the ad­min­is­tra­tion ex­pects oth­er na­tions to low­er their tar­iffs and oth­er bar­ri­ers to trade that it says have led to a $1.2 tril­lion trade im­bal­ance last year.

The tar­iffs fol­low sim­i­lar re­cent an­nounce­ments of 25% tax­es on au­to im­ports; levies against Chi­na, Cana­da and Mex­i­co; and ex­pand­ed trade penal­ties on steel and alu­minum. Trump has al­so im­posed tar­iffs on coun­tries that im­port oil from Venezuela and he plans sep­a­rate im­port tax­es on phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal drugs, lum­ber, cop­per and com­put­er chips.

None of the warn­ing signs about a falling stock mar­ket or con­sumer sen­ti­ment turn­ing mo­rose have caused the ad­min­is­tra­tion to pub­licly sec­ond-guess its strat­e­gy, de­spite the risk of po­lit­i­cal back­lash as vot­ers in last year’s elec­tion said they want­ed Trump to com­bat in­fla­tion.

Se­nior ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fi­cials, who in­sist­ed on anonymi­ty to pre­view the new tar­iffs with re­porters ahead of Trump’s speech, said the tax­es would raise hun­dreds of bil­lions of dol­lars an­nu­al­ly in rev­enues. They said the 10% base­line rate ex­ist­ed to help en­sure com­pli­ance, while the high­er rates were based on the trade deficits run with oth­er na­tions and then halved to reach the num­bers that Trump pre­sent­ed in the Rose Gar­den.

The 10% rate would be col­lect­ed start­ing Sat­ur­day and the high­er rates would be col­lect­ed be­gin­ning April 9.

Trump re­moved the tar­iff ex­emp­tions on im­ports from Chi­na worth $800 or less. He plans to re­move the ex­emp­tions oth­er na­tions have on im­ports worth $800 or less once the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment cer­ti­fies that it has the staffing and re­sources in place.

Long­time trad­ing part­ners are prepar­ing their own coun­ter­mea­sures. Cana­da has im­posed some in re­sponse to the 25% tar­iffs that Trump tied to the traf­fick­ing of fen­tanyl. The Eu­ro­pean Union, in re­sponse to the steel and alu­mini­um tar­iffs, put tax­es on 26 bil­lion eu­ros ($28 bil­lion) worth of US goods, in­clud­ing on bour­bon, which prompt­ed Trump to threat­en a 200% tar­iff on Eu­ro­pean al­co­hol.

Many al­lies feel they have been re­luc­tant­ly drawn in­to a con­fronta­tion by Trump, who rou­tine­ly says Amer­i­ca’s friends and foes have es­sen­tial­ly ripped off the Unit­ed States with a mix of tar­iffs and oth­er trade bar­ri­ers.

Italy’s pre­mier, Gior­gia Mel­oni, yes­ter­day re­it­er­at­ed her call to avoid an EU-US trade war, say­ing it would harm both sides and would have “heavy” con­se­quences for her coun­try’s econ­o­my.