In his endeavor to make America great, President Donald Trump is withdrawing the United States from world trade. American families, companies and investors will pay a price for that, as noted by many commentators. But the repercussions do not end there. The customs tariff system also destroys a column of American global power, and will isolate the country at a moment when others stand ready to fill the void.
On Wednesday, Trump announced that America will impose a 10 percent duty on imports from almost all countries, as well as an additional punitive tariff for countries that are seeing bad actors in trade, including Japan and members of the European Union. Some of these duties are very high. Add new fees to those previously imposed, the average tariff rate in China is now 70 percent. Trump described the definitions as a recovery: “Foreign chests have looted our factories, and foreign jubon dismantled our beautiful American dream.” “Our country and taxpayers have been stopped for more than 50 years, but that will not happen anymore.”
Trump's tariff is the culmination of decades -long -term political perceptions in the United States, in which trade has moved from a commodity that is not owned by the source of all diseases. The United States once sought to reduce barriers and open markets worldwide – as trade deals such as the North America's Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico were offered, and the World Trade Organization support. Reducing the resulting global trading system the cost of goods, which have benefited from companies and consumers in wealthy countries such as the United States. The poor countries, such as China, have also linked international supply chains, allowing them to create jobs, Woo investment, and reduce poverty. In fact, the United States has become the final consumer in the world, which linked other countries to its economy and interests.
The trade was glorifying the international system led by the Americans together. But the economy always involves differentials. With the extension of supply chains around the world in search of lower costs, many factories have disappeared from the American heart. Some Americans were installed on trade as a source of inequality and restriction of the movement that was afflicted with the middle and working classes in the country; The populist politicians encouraged these feelings.
Strategic, also, the promise of trade seemed unreasonable: American experts and politicians have confirmed after the Cold War that economic exchange would turn China and Russia into peaceful partners. Within two decades, it is clear that these forces have become authoritarian competitors instead.
Trump team has sold its definitions program as an offer to control matters directly by forcing the missing factories in America to return to their homes. “You will see the greatest return to build factories and produce factories in America,” said US Secretary of Trade Howard Lootnick in defense of definitions. Trump is “changing the way people think about production in America.”
The results are unlikely what the administration expects. Some foreign companies may actually respond to tariffs by building factories in the United States to maintain their presence in a decisive market. But many others are very small, or very integrated in the current supply chains, to achieve this step. Where millions of American workers will come together, the manufacture of auto parts is also a mystery, especially given the President's opposition to migration on a large scale. Factory in the United States is already struggling to find workers; The manufacturing sector contains hundreds of thousands of vacant openings.
Trump has long complained that some other countries tend to trade. The White House was martyred, in explaining the customs tariff system, practices by other countries, including currency manipulation and exhausting products standards that prevent imports, which were real concerns. But the customs tariff system may soon put the comfortable truth of the relative feature: some goods are made outside the United States because the factories elsewhere can produce them cheaply and efficiently. Low costs are a big factor, but also efficiency. Many manufacturers in China and other places have developed skills and experiences that make them very competitive.
Trump's potential result will be high prices for what Americans make and buy, whether it is produced at home at a greater cost from abroad or imported from abroad with a punitive necessity. According to one of the estimates, the customs tariff can raise the price of the iPhone from the top to 2300 dollars. The Trump team seems to accept this. “Access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream,” said US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessin in March. But when consumers buy fewer products at higher prices, companies produce and sell them fewer, employ a fewer workers, and slow down growth. As French President Emmanuel Macron said, Trump's policy will make the Americans “weaker and poorer.”
It will not be the only Americans to suffer in a global trade war. Other countries are likely to respond to American definitions by establishing their protectionist barriers. China has already announced an additional 34 percent tariff for US imports. The European Union also threatens revenge. World trade, which was one day, may be reflected in a prosperity and become a source of economic competition.
Other countries have long accepted the American leadership because they saw Washington in support of global economic progress. The role Trump chooses for the United States is not. It may eventually back down from the customs tariffs of those countries that are negotiating with him, and this may be seen as an offer to the king -like power: Trump has already said that he will be ready to reduce duties in China in exchange for a deal related to Tiktok. But the wrong and arbitrary nature of the policies, and the willingness to exploit the American economic power to blackmail the concessions, will undermine America almost everywhere.
In fact, the administration's tariff policy opens opportunities for Beijing, for all players, to photograph itself as the most responsibility world leader. At a meeting a few days before Trump's announcement, ministers from China, Japan and South Korea issued a statement pledged to promote global trade.
Two of Washington's nearest allies will join Beijing in an implicit criticism of the United States highlighting the danger. The United States remains the world's largest economy and a major market for many countries' exports. But it is not the only game in the city. Publishing a social media account linked to CCTV, a broadcaster for the Chinese state, with a drawing that shows the wide commercial agreements owned by America's partners with each other and commented, with the new definitions, the United States “closes itself from the free trade world.” These countries will continue to expand Trump's economic relations. During his first term, after Trump withdrew the United States from a major trade agreement called a Pacific partnership, the participants completed the agreement on their own.
Customs duties will not make other countries respect the United States. But they can make them move without it.
