Project 2025's Reciprocal Tariff Plan: Unilateral Bluster Without Labor or Environmental Standards
Project 2025's trade chapter champions the United States Reciprocal Trade Act (USRTA) to replace WTO MFN tariffs with reciprocal tariffs, framing Chinese practices as 'economic aggression'—yet it proposes no enforceable labor or environmental standards in U.S. trade policy. The April 2025 executive order partially implements this vision, but the approach risks higher consumer prices and geopolitical backlash while ignoring the race-to-the-bottom that fair-trade standards would address.
Project 2025's trade chapter (pages 778–782) presents a detailed table of Chinese 'economic aggression'—including weak labor laws, lax environmental enforcement, and IP theft—but offers no reciprocal mechanism to enforce labor or environmental standards in U.S. trade deals. This is a glaring omission from a fair-trade perspective. The table accuses China of using 'lax and inconsistent labor laws' and 'weak and laxly enforced environmental laws' as tools of economic aggression, yet the chapter's sole policy prescription—the United States Reciprocal Trade Act (USRTA)—would replace WTO MFN tariffs with reciprocal tariffs mirroring foreign rates and nontariff barriers, without any requirement for trading partners to uphold labor or environmental standards. The April 2, 2025, executive order on reciprocal tariffs partially implements this vision, imposing a 10% baseline and higher rates for countries with large trade deficits, but the approach ignores structural causes of the trade deficit, such as U.S. industrial policy failures and corporate offshoring.
From a fair-trade standpoint, the USRTA is a blunt instrument that risks raising consumer prices—especially for low-income households, as the Yale Budget Lab projects—while doing nothing to end the race-to-the-bottom in labor and environmental protections. By contrast, a fair-trade approach would condition tariff reductions on enforceable labor rights, environmental commitments, and supply-chain transparency, as seen in the USMCA's rapid-response mechanism or the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. The geopolitical effect is also troubling: unilateral tariff actions alienate allies and weaken the WTO dispute-resolution system, the only forum where smaller nations can hold larger economies accountable. Coordinated, multilateral action—paired with domestic industrial policy to rebuild U.S. manufacturing capacity—would be more effective than headline-grabbing tariffs that hit allied countries and fail to address the root causes of economic aggression.
Rollback path — how this gets undone
This action has already been implemented. These are the concrete levers that could reverse it.
- Rescind Executive Order on Reciprocal Tariffs (April 2, 2025) The President can rescind the April 2025 EO that imposed 10% baseline reciprocal tariffs; no statutory change needed since H.R.735 is not yet law.
- Defeat H.R.735 in Congress Congress can let H.R.735 die without passage, or pass a Congressional Review Act resolution if a rule is issued under the bill's authority; progressive members should oppose expansion of unilateral tariff power without labor/environmental standards.
- Amend USRTA to include enforceable labor and environmental provisions If H.R.735 advances, amend it to require that any reciprocal tariff reductions be contingent on verified improvements in labor rights and environmental protection in trading partner countries, modeled on USMCA's rapid-response mechanism.
Reversing it is step one. The forward agenda — what we build so it can’t recur — is in Answers to this entry →
Grounded in
- Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership Full PDF
- H.R.735 - United States Reciprocal Trade Act (119th Congress)
- White House EO: Regulating Imports with a Reciprocal Tariff (April 2025)
- ITIF: From Outside Assaults to Insider Threats: Chinese Economic Espionage
- Yale Budget Lab: Effects of Illustrative Reciprocal US Tariffs
- Wikipedia: Project 2025 overview
- Democracy Forward: The People's Guide to Project 2025
- Congress.gov: Summary of H.R.764 (116th) USRTA
Original source — excerpted
project2025 Project 2025 ch. 26: Trade (pp 811-815)"— 778 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise China/quotesingle.tabs Acts/comma.tab Policies/comma.tab and Practices of Economic Aggression Protect China/quotesingle.tabs Home Market from Competition and Imports Expand China’s Share of Global Markets Secure and Control Core Natural Resources Globally Dominate Traditional Manufacturing Industries Acquire Key Technologies and IP from Other Countries and the U/period.tabS/period.tab Capture Emerging High-Tech Industries that Drive Future Growth and Advancements in Defense Industry Lax and Inconsistent Labor Laws % % % Monopsony Purchasing Power % % Move the Regulatory Goalposts % % % Open Source Collection of Science and Technology Information % % Overcapacity Drives Out Foreign Rivals % % % Physical Theft of Technologies and IP Through Economic Espionage % % % % Placement of Chinese Employees with Foreign Joint Ventures % Price Controls to Restrict Imports % TABLE 5 Communist China’s Categories of Economic Aggression (Page 5 of 8) — 779 — Trade China/quotesingle.tabs Acts/comma.tab Policies/comma.tab and Practices of Economic Aggression Protect China/quotesingle.tabs Home Market fr…"