Even the penguins of Antarctica’s uninhabited islands appear to have been targeted by President Trump after his imposition of tariffs, even in those places where there are no people but plenty of penguins. It’s no laughing matter, as it demonstrates a massive and thoughtless, slap-dash, worldwide tariff war.
President Trump has unleashed a global trade war, and American families are sure to pay the price. Trump's tariffs have targeted more than 180 countries in retaliation for what he alleges are unfair trade practices imposed on US goods entering the ports of nations with which we trade. Trump and his tariff team are playing with fire by unleashing this massive tariff trade war. Trump has always looked at tariffs as free money for America. He proudly refers to himself as Tariff Man. Tax Man would be more appropriate.
Ryan Mulholland, a former director of trade and competitiveness at the National Security Council and current senior fellow for international economic policy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, opines that President Trump’s global tariff war “would have been unimaginable a short time ago.”
President Trump has bypassed Congress by declaring his tariffs are in response to a “national emergency.” Of course, it is a “national emergency” of his making. With this dubious justification, President Trump has imposed special tariffs on all countries that have a trade surplus with the United States and across-the-board tariffs on all other countries.
This is very serious stuff. With these tariffs, President Trump has imposed the largest tax hike in the last six decades. Yale’s Budget Lab says that these tariffs will increase prices in the United States by an immediate 2.3 percent, which the Budget Lab projects will cost average American consumers about $3,800 per household. Economists are now predicting that President Trump has also imposed a probable recession before this year is over, as well as lower economic growth and higher inflation.
The president held a Rose Garden ceremony this week to announce 10 percent tariffs that went into effect yesterday and country-specific tariffs that will go into effect next Wednesday. By declaring a national emergency, these tariffs have become law without the approval of Congress, which is historically bad governance.
The tariffs will hit lower-income families hardest, with those in the bottom ten percent experiencing a 2.5-times greater hit to disposable income than those in the top 10 percent. Some economists are predicting higher inflation, stagnant or diminished economic growth, and an increased likelihood of a recession by year’s end.
China suffers the greatest shellacking, with a 34% levy on goods from China over and above the current 20% tariff. The EU gets off a bit lighter, being assessed 20%. Southeast Asian countries are hardest hit, with Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia facing tariffs ranging from 46% to 49%. While Mexico and Canada are protected by the existing United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreements, Canadian energy and potash are hit with new 10% tariffs.
America’s trading partners are furious, as well they should be. President Trump is forcing American consumers to pay much more for the products produced abroad for the American market. Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz called President Trump’s war on trade “fundamentally wrong,” correctly calling Trump’s tariff decisions “an attack on a trade order that has created global prosperity. The entire global economy will suffer from these ill-conceived decisions. Businesses and consumers worldwide, including in the United States, will be affected. The US administration is embarking on a path that can only result in losses for everyone,” Chancellor Scholz said.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock also was sharply critical of Trump’s decision to go to war against America’s trading partners, warning of severe economic consequences. “Anyone who uses a wrecking ball to tear down an entire house just because the roof needs retiling is left with ruins that cannot be easily rebuilt," Baerbock said.
Other nations will, of course, do more than just complain. French President Macron urged European companies to hold back investments in the United States. China immediately announced that it would retaliate with a 35 percent tariff on merchandise made in America, and European Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen said the European Commission would invoke its own countermeasures against the United States.
This Trumpian trade chaos has no redeeming value. Many generations ago, the world learned that tariff warfare was a dead-end practice. When every nation embraces draconian barriers to trade, all nations wind up losing. Following the Great Depression of the 1930s, the world’s major trading nations entered into so-called Free Trade Agreements, which, while imperfect, tended to lower tariffs and reduce barriers to trade.
The purpose of these trade agreements has been to promote trade while recognizing that there will always be some degree of protectionism, that is, measures nations take to ensure a somewhat level playing field for their respective industries to compete in the international marketplace. While there have always been and will continue to be, efforts by trading nations to protect their domestic industries, the world’s trading nations have long understood that rules conducive to trade benefit all international trading nations. Muscular protectionist tariffs have a long and unhappy pedigree. Sooner or later, they lead to retaliatory tariffs, as happened after the 1930 passage of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. I would guess that President Trump, or Tariff Man, as he likes to refer to himself, has never heard of Reed Smoot and Willis Hawley. They have been consigned to the dustbin of economic history because of their infatuation with, and promulgation of, aggressive tariffs that plunged America into the depths of depression.
Mr. Smoot and Mr. Hawley, as depressing a couple as there has ever been, taught America a tragic lesson. Someone should school President Trump in that lesson. He’s playing with fire. As Philosopher George Santayana famously taught many years ago, “Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.”
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Recent podcasts have featured my commentary on Liz Cheney’s book, “Oath and Honor,” as well as my commentaries regarding:
U.S. Representative Jim Jordan,
Brian Kemp and Those Republicans of Georgia,
The Trump Indictments,
The Fox Corp Settlement,
The CNN Trump Town Hall,
The Hunter Biden plea deal,
The New American Cult of Personality,
and my interviews with William Bratton, Retired Chief of Police in New York City, Los Angeles, and Boston;
Rikki Klieman, Attorney, Network News Analyst, and best-selling author;
John Thoresen, Executive Director, Barbara Sinatra Children’s Center;
Katherine Gehl, co-author of The Politics Industry and founder of the Institute for Political Innovation;
The dumpster fire is what we’ll experience over the next year and hopefully not another Great Depression. I have prepared to the extent I can by buying new electronics that I needed and opted to do an expensive fix on my car rather than buying a newer one. I may grow vegetables!
This opinion article is a partisan-fueled dumpster fire. It is ridiculous that he is taking exception to the leveling of the playing field for the USA.
The dumpster fire is what we’ll experience over the next year and hopefully not another Great Depression. I have prepared to the extent I can by buying new electronics that I needed and opted to do an expensive fix on my car rather than buying a newer one. I may grow vegetables!
This opinion article is a partisan-fueled dumpster fire. It is ridiculous that he is taking exception to the leveling of the playing field for the USA.