Maduro: Venezuela will be the first country to bypass Trump's tariffs
3 Min Read
Maduro warned of an escalating global trade and economic confrontation but emphasized that his country had strategically prepared for such a scenario.
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Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro holds a nws conference at the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, Venezuela, on July 31, 2024. (AP)
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has stressed that his country will be the first to bypass US President Donald Trump's tariffs.
Speaking during a working day dedicated to the popular municipal government system in Caracas, he said that "Venezuela's economy is at war," and Maduro denounced Trump's statements justifying tariff and tax measures as a "day of liberation."
"I ask myself, should the United States be liberated from the world, or should the world be liberated from the United States?" Maduro asked.
Maduro warned of an escalating global trade and economic confrontation but emphasized that his country had strategically prepared for such a scenario. He said, "A global trade and economic war has broken out. Fortunately, we are prepared for this scenario. We have plans for every emergency."
He also pointed to concrete plans developed based on proactive leadership, saying, "We are prepared for such things. Venezuela has plans because we are leaders. Yesterday, we held a meeting with the productive sector of the 13 economic engines. We humbly developed our own plans, and today we are in the best position to continue the path of our own economic models and overcome any tariff war waged by Trump." He emphasized that all of this is taking place amid national unity.
The world's richest people have lost hundreds of billions of dollars in one single day following Trump's announcement of reciprocal tariffs on more than 180 countries on Wednesday.
The richest people in the world lost a total of $208 billion dollars in 24 hours following the US tariffs announcement, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index (BBI) on Thursday, in the fourth-largest plummet since the BBI was launched 13 years ago and the largest since the economic recession brought by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Meta, which is banned in Russia as an extremist organization, saw its shares drop by nearly 9% on Thursday, leading to a 9% loss in the fortune of its founder Mark Zuckerberg, amounting to $17.9 billion, according to BBI data, which also indicated that Zuckerberg became the biggest loser in dollar terms.
On the other hand, Jeff Bezos, owner of the online retailer Amazon, lost $15.9 billion after Amazon shares saw a 9% decline, which is the largest drop Amazon has witnessed since April 2022.
US billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, who owns Tesla and SpaceX and is a key ally to US President Trump, lost $11 billion on Thursday amid an almost 5.5% drop in Tesla shares.
