President Trump signed another round of tariffs at the White House Thursday afternoon, this time targeting Chinese intellectual property theft.
Citing a threat to American innovation, the administration "will propose for public comment adding 25 percent additional tariffs on certain products that are supported by China’s unfair industrial policy" with "sectors subject to the proposed tariffs will include aerospace, information communication technology, and machinery."
"We're doing things for this country that should've been done for many, many years," Trump said before a brief signing ceremony. "We have a tremendous intellectual property theft going on, which likewise is hundreds of billions of dollars and that's on a yearly basis."
"It [China] is the largest deficit of any country in the history of our world," he continued. "This has been long in the making. We've lost, over a fairly short period of time, 60,000 factories in our country, six million jobs at least. Gone."
"The era of economic surrender is over," Vice President Mike Pence added.
.@POTUS Trump delivers remarks before signing a Presidential Memorandum Targeting #China’s Economic Aggression. pic.twitter.com/dVpKiDrLSj
— Department of State (@StateDept) March 22, 2018
Trump also addressed NAFTA, which he has repeatedly threatened to walk away from unless Mexico and Canada can come up with a better deal for the United States.
"NAFTA's been a very bad deal for the United States," Trump said.