There are situations in which prices are a useful tool for processing a trade deficit or to protect the key sectors of the economy of a country. Then there are situations where you accuse a bunch of penguins on an uninhabited island of currency manipulation. Guess in which we live?
It is a question of putting the prices of the collectors announced by President Donald Trump on Wednesday afternoon. In addition to the islands heard and McDonald’s occupied by the Penguins, the prices target the British territory of the Indian Ocean, whose only occupants live on a joint American military base on Diego Garcia Island. Yes, the United States takes reciprocal prices against its own troops.
And then there are the prices against countries with real goods and services on which American consumers depend. China: 54%. Vietnam: 46%. Cambodia: 49%. South Korea: 25%. No corner of the American consumption economy will be intact. Prices will increase. The spiral stock market. A recession weave. The technological industry will be upset. Mark Cuban, noted billionaire, is encouraging People store consumables before it is too late.
It’s reckless, it’s absurd, and that is also all that Donald Trump clearly said he would do on the campaign track. Certainly, he did not telegraph how much the methodology It would be – you can read more hereBut it is enough to say that it is completely detached from the realities of international trade – but it has repeatedly promised a price of glory several times.
Declared him aim is to return manufacturing jobs to the United States, which is a bit like resuscitating the dodo. The United States still manufactures many goods; It is second after China in annual production, according to the World Bank. But many of the industry jobs have been replaced by automation, a bottle that you cannot record. And higher domestic labor costs mean that products manufactured in the United States will be intrinsically more expensive, an American compromise has always rejected. All of this was already true in Trump’s first term. It’s even more now.
And let’s say that a plurality of companies has decided to reshape or create factories in the United States. The calendar for these decisions and the implementation is measured in years, if not decades, and follow -up can be uneven. (Just Ask Foxconn.) So what’s going on while waiting?
The justification has all the weight of a soap bubble. There are no people where the United States suddenly manufactures all the articles that the country has decided to target. There is now a price of 47% on Madagascar. Do you know why the United States has a trade deficit with Madagascar? They produce vanilla; We don’t do it. Unless we suddenly install vanilla mounting lines in Ohio, this does not change.
But perhaps the so-called day of the release of Trump is only a master of negotiation stratagem. “Everyone sits down, breathe deeply. Do not retaliate immediately. Let’s see where it goes, ” said The secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent on CNN on Wednesday. “Because if you retaliate, that’s how we get an escalation.”
