SINGAPORE: United States President Donald Trump called Wednesday (Apr 2) “one of the most important days, in my opinion, in American history” as he unveiled a raft of tariffs for the rest of the world. It's part the president's plan to address trade imbalances, and will lead to Asian economies contending with sharply higher tariffs. What are “reciprocal" tariffs? First, tariffs are taxes placed on foreign-made imports. With reciprocal tariffs, the US aims to mirror import duties placed by other economies on American-made goods. The world’s largest economy generally has lower tariffs than those it trades with. Under Trump, the White House has criticised this lack of reciprocity. For example, its cited a 2.7 per cent tariff on unhusked rice versus 80 per cent by India, 40 per cent by Malaysia and 31 per cent by Turkey on the same. But it's not as simple as matching numbers. The Trump administration has said that in determining “the equivalent of a reciprocal tariff” with each trading partner, it looked not just at import duties but also other practices it considers unfair. Some of these include value-added tax, government subsidies, currency manipulation tactics, technology transfer practices and lack of intellectual property protection.