南方财经全媒体记者 李依农 上海报道

On what the U.S. President Donald Trump has dubbed "Liberation Day," he announced a universal "baseline" 10% tariff on all imports into the U.S., with different countries facing even higher tariffs. In an interview with SFC, Bala Ramasamy, Professor of Economics at CEIBS, criticized the move, stating that while free trade has benefited all nations, including the U.S., the real issue is the unequal distribution of its benefits. He pointed out that, over the past 50 years, the wealthy have grown richer, while middle-income Americans have seen little to no improvement in their wages. Ramasamy argued that this issue is internal to the U.S., not a fault of the global free trade system, and therefore does not view the tariff as “liberation.”