China Uses Ronald Reagan’s 1987 Speech to Criticize Trump’s Tariffs

The Chinese Embassy has shared a clip of iconic Republican President Ronald Reagan criticizing tariffs, saying the speech packs renewed meaning nowadays amid President Donald Trump’s global levies.

“Ronald Reagan vs. #tariffs : 1987 speech finds new relevance in 2025,” the embassy in the U.S. captioned the Monday post on X, alongside the clip of Reagan’s second-term missive.

The Context

Global markets have plummeted since Trump announced his tariffs last week, with the S&P 500 nearing bear market territory when it opened on Monday. There is growing concern, including from Republicans and Trump allies, that the levies could be dragging the United States into a recession.

But Trump has continued to double down on his tariffs plan despite the escalating trade war.

On Monday, the president announced plans to impose an additional 50 percent tariff on China after it reacted to the 34 percent tariff he imposed the country last week, with a retaliatory levy of its own. If implemented, that would push U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports to a total of 104 percent.

Newsweek reached out to the White House via email on Monday evening for comment on the Chinese Embassy’s posting of Reagan’s speech.

What To Know

In the radio address from April 25, 1987, Reagan slammed tariffs, warning they would lead to collapsing markets, crumbling industry and the loss of jobs for millions of Americans.

Reagan, who lived through the Great Depression, warned that the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, passed in 1930, made the then-burgeoning Depression worse and “prevented economic recovery.”

“There are those in this Congress … who want to go for the quick political advantage, who will risk America’s prosperity for the sake of a short-term appeal to some special interest group, who forget that more than 5 million American jobs are directly tied to the foreign export business and additional millions are tied to imports,” he warns.

The Chinese Embassy appears to have shared Reagan’s words as a timely warning for Trump, whose new tariffs have sent global markets into a tailspin, prompting major U.S. banks to warn of a looming recession.

But Reagan is an odd bedfellow for China. The former U.S. president was a fervent anti-Communist whose administration pursued a policy of rollback on Communist regimes, with the Reagan Doctrine providing covert aid to anti-Communist resistance movements across Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Reagan also believed that the Chinese anti-Communist government, which fled to Taiwan in 1949 when the Chinese Communist Party took power, as China’s legitimate government. But he did visit the nation in 1984 and was broadly welcoming of China’s move to a more open and less isolated country.

Reagan’s 1987 Speech in Full

“You see, at first, when someone says, ‘Let’s impose tariffs on foreign imports,’ it looks like they’re doing the patriotic thing by protecting American products and jobs. And sometimes for a short while it works—but only for a short time. What eventually occurs is: First, homegrown industries start relying on government protection in the form of high tariffs.

They stop competing and stop making the innovative management and technological changes they need to succeed in world markets. And then, while all this is going on, something even worse occurs. High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars.

The result is more and more tariffs, higher and higher trade barriers, and less and less competition. So, soon, because of the prices made artificially high by tariffs that subsidize inefficiency and poor management, people stop buying. Then the worst happens: Markets shrink and collapse; businesses and industries shut down; and millions of people lose their jobs.

The memory of all this occurring back in the ’30s made me determined when I came to Washington to spare the American people the protectionist legislation that destroys prosperity.

Now, it hasn’t always been easy. There are those in this Congress, just as there were back in the ’30s, who want to go for the quick political advantage, who will risk America’s prosperity for the sake of a short-term appeal to some special interest group, who forget that more than 5 million American jobs are directly tied to the foreign export business and additional millions are tied to imports.

For those of us who lived through the Great Depression, the memory of the suffering it caused is deep and searing. And today, many economic analysts and historians argue that high tariff legislation, passed back in that period called the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, greatly deepened the Depression and prevented economic recovery.”

What People Are Saying

Trump, on Truth Social: “Yesterday, China issued Retaliatory Tariffs of 34%, on top of their already record setting Tariffs, Non-Monetary Tariffs, Illegal Subsidization of companies, and massive long term Currency Manipulation, despite my warning that any country that Retaliates against the U.S. by issuing additional Tariffs, above and beyond their already existing long term Tariff abuse of our Nation, will be immediately met with new and substantially higher Tariffs, over and above those initially set.”

Bill Ackman, CEO of hedge fund management company Pershing Square Capital Management, on X, formerly Twitter: “I am just frustrated watching what I believe to be a major policy error occur after our country and the president have been making huge economic progress that is now at risk due to the tariffs.”

What Happens Next

It seems unlikely that China will revoke its retaliatory tariffs before Trump’s Tuesday deadline. If it fails to do so, the president has threatened to impose his new set of levies against China on Wednesday.