TWO ANTARCTIC islands inhabited by only penguins are among the targets of Donald Trump’s tariff war.
Also on the hit list unveiled by him on April 2 are countries like Haiti, Ethiopia and Lesotho.
According to the US president, who leads the world’s richest country and the one with the most billionaires, such poverty-stricken nations are among those who have “looted, pillaged, raped and plundered” America.
“Foreign cheaters have ransacked our factories, and foreign scavengers have torn apart our once beautiful American dream,” he bemoaned in the serenity of the White House Rose Garden.
For Mr Trump, tariff is the most beautiful word in the English language. Call him the Poet Laureate of Tariffs.
Falling fluently from his tongue are verses involving “retaliatory tariffs,” “non-monetary tariffs” and “secondary tariffs.” Some of these terms are self-defined. They are used by him alongside unsupported claims of “currency manipulation” and “trade barriers.”
But the words he may soon become more familiar with are: inflation, crash and recession.
The Prime Minister’s suggestion, at the Cabinet briefing of April 3, that this country will have to take time to study the implications of the US president’s order is far too sanguine a response.
More welcome are Mr Young’s suggestions that Caricom should act as a bloc and that alternatives to the US market may be found. Such actions must involve retaliation, even if the region has been lucky not to be hit with higher penalties. Ten per cent is bad enough.
While not a complicated matter given recent political shifts, a pathway to Europe, the world’s largest single market, may be open given historic ties. This must be explored.
In fact, Mr Young should have already been prepared to address all of this from day one.
Approximately 40 per cent of this country’s exports, including those from our fledgling manufacturing sector, go to the US. At stake is more than just the sale of Angostura Bitters.
The US president’s actions are a surprise to no one. He campaigned on tariffs. He has wrangled with Mexico and Canada since entering office in January.
Still, the scale of the measures unveiled – Madagascar was hit with a 47 per cent levy; earthquake-devastated Myanmar 44 per cent – is a shock. This is no mere “negotiation tactic.”
This constitutes the third element in the Republican leader’s seemingly destructive trifecta: in the space of months, he has undone the global economic system, the international political order and the shape of political virtue.
A darling of the evangelical far-right, he has been amorality’s greatest champion. For him, friends are foes, and foes are friends. Russia has not been tariffed. Under Mr Trump, the world’s most powerful country is also its most dangerous pariah state.
The post Tariff terror appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.
