Since last April, President Trump proclaimed Liberation Day, when the government announced the most radical tariff increase since the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, the 1930 law best remembered for triggering a global trade war and deepening the Great Depression.

Four months after that announcement, which has been postponed or adjusted several times, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told the Japanese newspaper Nikkei that the reciprocal tariffs imposed by the United States on imports from other countries could be reduced if what Washington considers trade imbalances improve.

"Over time, the tariffs should be like an ice cube melting," Bessent said in an interview last Thursday in his office.

When Trump made the announcement, he said he believed that tariffs, in addition to punishing countries that have imposed unfair trade barriers on American products, would catalyze the reindustrialization of the United States.

Against that context, Bessent explained that the main objective of the Trump administration's use of tariffs is to "rebalance" the current account deficit, which in 2024 amounted to $1.18 trillion, by far the largest among major economies.

He warned that a deficit of such magnitude could lead to a financial crisis, but also noted that a "return of the production” to the United States would lead to lower imports and a “rebalancing” of its trade balance.

Regarding negotiations with countries with which Washington has not yet reached a trade agreement, he pointed to “the end of October” as the date to “have finished” with most of them.

Bessent referred specifically to China and described the negotiations with Beijing as “difficult” since the Asian giant “is a non-market economy, and non-market economies have different objectives.”

He also pointed out China's overproduction and its exports of large volumes of products at extremely low prices. "We believe that a large part of the production is below cost. It's an employment program. They have employment and production goals, rather than profitability," he emphasized.

The latest threat came last Thursday, when the new tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump on more than 90 countries around the world, including six in Latin America, went into effect.

Shortly before their implementation, the president stated that "billions of dollars, mostly from countries that have taken advantage of the United States for many years," will begin to flow into the country.