– and impact will be ‘horrific’
By Michael Moran,
Irish Star
In the wake of Donald Trump ‘s so-called ” Liberation Day ” announcement, in which the US president announced a sweeping range of import tariffs on territories around the world – some of which are actually uninhabited – political expert Ian Dunt has launched a scathing attack on what he described as “the single stupidest thing any of us will ever see”.
“This is what empires look like when they fall,” Dunt wrote in the I , “lost to mania, paranoia, jealousy and spasms of baseless rage.”
In his announcement, Trump claimed: “For decades our country has been looted, pillaged, raped, and plundered by nations near and far, both friends and foe alike.” In response, he said, he was introducing massive levies of up to 50% on goods imported from practically every country on Earth – with the notable exception of Russia .
Trump announced the tariffs at a Washington press conference by holding up a large piece of cardboard on which the countries were listed in no discernible order: “The numbers on the chart were pure gibberish,” Dunt says. “It stated that Vietnam had a 90 per cent tariff on US goods. Needless to say, the country does not. It stated that Japan has a 46 per cent tariff on US goods. Obviously, it does not.”
Among the highest-rated tariffs was a 50% levy on goods from Saint Pierre and Miquelon, a French-owned group of small islands off the coast of Canada. While it’s not quite as puzzling as the 10% tariff placed on the Heard and McDonald islands – which are inhabited exclusively by penguins – it’s a baffling decision.
The thought process behind each individual tariff appears to be based on a simple calculus of the US’s trade deficit with the country concerned, divided by the value of that country’s exports.
“It’s hard to state just how nonsensical that actually is,” Dunt says. “You might as well divide the number of apples in your kitchen by the number of bagels and use it to calculate your mortgage rate. To criticise it on political or economic grounds is too generous. It operates below the level of rational thought.”
According to recent figures, the US has the largest trade deficit in the world. It imported $1.1 trillion more than it exported in 2023. The country’s trade deficit has been rising continuously since 2019, and has remained in excess of $1 trillion for four years in a row.
America’s single biggest trade deficit is with China – driven by strong consumer demand for cheap Chinese goods and US companies’ reliance on China in global supply chains.
In response to Trump’s tariffs on China – which will dramatically increase the price of Chinese goods for American consumers – the Chinese government has immediately hit back with a massive 34% tariff on US goods.
The spiralling trade war has already had a huge impact on global financial markets, with share prices plummeting.
The impact of Trump’s actions will – Dunt says – be “horrific.” As prices rocket across the US, workers will demand higher wages, compounding the problem. At the same time, he adds: “US exporters will be battered by reciprocal tariffs imposed by Canada, the EU and others.”
Dunt predicts that Trump will, in the end, pay the price for this foolhardy scheme: “No one wins here. We all lose. Countries that trade with the US lose, just like the US itself will lose. Trump himself will lose.”
A deep global recession is now inevitable, he says. Whether “Liberation Day” will spark a true worldwide depression, of the kind that set the scene of the Second World War, remains to be seen.
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