President Donald Trump introduced new reciprocal tariffs during a “Make America Wealthy Again” event, saying they will help restore the American dream and bring back jobs for U.S. workers.

“American steel workers, auto workers, farmers and skilled craftsmen,” Trump said from the White House Rose Garden on Wednesday. “We have a lot of them here with us today. They really suffered, gravely. They watched in anguish as foreign leaders have stolen our jobs, foreign cheaters have ransacked our factories, and foreign scavengers have torn apart our once-beautiful American dream. We had an American dream that you don’t hear so much about. You did four years ago, and you are now. But you don’t too often.”

He went on to say, “Now it’s our turn to prosper, and in so doing, use trillions and trillions of dollars to reduce our taxes and pay down our national debt. And it will all happen very quickly. With today’s action, we are finally going to be able to make America great again, greater than ever before. Jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country, and you see it happening already. We will supercharge our domestic industrial base.”

The event, held in the Rose Garden, was the first official presidential event there since Trump was sworn in for his second term in January. He was joined by members of his Cabinet for the announcement.

Trump explained that countries that treat the U.S. unfairly will face tariffs based on what they impose on America. “For nations that treat us badly, we will calculate the combined rate of all their tariffs, nonmonetary barriers and other forms of cheating. And because we are being very kind, we will charge them approximately half of what they are and have been charging us. So the tariffs will be not a full reciprocal. I could have done that. Yes. But it would have been tough for a lot of countries.”

He cited the European Union, Japan, and China as examples. The EU will face a 20% tariff, compared to the 39% it places on U.S. goods. Japan will see 24% tariffs, while China will be hit with a 34% tariff. Other countries like Chile, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka will also face tariffs. Some nations will see a baseline tariff of 10%.

Trump also criticized “non-tariff barriers” that other countries impose on American goods. These include quotas and regulations that restrict exports, particularly agricultural products like meat and fresh produce.

“For decades, the United States slashed trade barriers on other countries, while those nations placed massive tariffs on our products and created outrageous non-monetary barriers to decimate our industries,” Trump said. “And in many cases, the non-monetary barriers were worse than the monetary ones. They manipulated their currencies, subsidized their exports, stole our intellectual property, imposed exorbitant taxes to disadvantage our products, adopted unfair rules and technical standards, and created filthy pollution havens.”

Trump emphasized that for over a century, tariffs helped fuel America’s economic growth. “From 1789 to 1913, we were a tariff-backed nation. And the United States was proportionately the wealthiest it has ever been,” he said. “So wealthy, in fact, that in the 1880s they established a commission to decide what they were going to do with the vast sums of money they were collecting. We were collecting so much money so fast, we didn’t know what to do with it. Isn’t that a nice problem to have?”

He also encouraged companies to build in the U.S. to avoid tariffs altogether. “And my answer is very simple. If they complain, if you want your tariff rate to be zero, then you build your product right here in America. Because there is no tariff. If you build your plant, your product in America. And we’ve seen companies coming in like we’ve never seen before.”

The Trump administration has promoted April 2 as “Liberation Day,” claiming that the new tariffs will level the playing field for American businesses after years of trade imbalance.