MAGA My God: Trump’s full trade war against China, EU, Canada, Mexico, you name it

Bang, the new US administration recently launched 25% tariffs on EU steel and aluminium, almost everything imported from Canada and Mexico as well as 20% on Chinese imports. The Wall Street stock exchange felt its worst day last Monday with investors in panic after Trump’s promulgation of trade wars against everybody. MAGA (Make America Great Again) and My God! are pretty much one and the same.

Strangely enough the US electorate voted for Trump because they were adamant that the economy would be better with him running things, or simply because it is the perennial notion for generations in the American voter’s mind that somehow the Republicans will help them make a buck more than the Democrats. The truth is though that this inference is arbitrary and large trade wars assuming a US zero sum game will only make people poorer.

It is also true that MAGA was elected because in America people took voting as seriously as a selfie on Instragram. It is said that if something wrong is repeated by a million people, what is correct becomes automatically wrong and irrelevant for the plethora. Decadent as it might have been for people voting for overt lies like “they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the dogs”, the US voter doesn’t care any more for her vote, pretty much like the citizen of Gotham city wants to see it burst into flames; only that this time Batman will not come to the rescue.

It is truly striking for the President of the US albeit constitutionally omnipotent that there is no-one in the courtyard of the White House that can simply consult sanity and facts. So, tariffs on China were doubled and China responded with powerful countermeasures on significant agriculture imports from the US like beef, dairy, vegetables etc. Also, special Chinese measures have been taken on medical equipment provided, restricted business for biotech enterprises etc. All the retaliation measures are expected to handsomely hurt the US economy and get even.

Who wins from all that? No-one. Similary, the Trump administration hit the EU steel and aluminium industry with 25% tariffs. As a response, the EU will halt the infamous suspension of the 2018 and 2020 countermeasures against a wide range of US products like bourbon, boats and motorbikes. In addition, a new set of EU tariffs is on its way too e.g. steel and aluminium products, textiles, leather goods, home appliances, house tools, plastics, wood products, agricultural products like poultry, beef, certain seafood, nuts, eggs, dairy, sugar and vegetables. The total value of the EU tariffs will match the US ones and will go as high as 28 billion dollars!

In a nutshell, the Trump admininstration is going against the entire universe, China, EU, Canada, you name it. All of that will set the world back hundreds of billions of dollars. This will inescapably cause companies to go bust, families to be ruined, recession and utter decadence, perhaps a war or two too. And all of that why?

The US argument that is pro trade wars is as strong as the infamous song “they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the dogs.” Trump accuses China for the Fentanyl drug issues in the country, although this is not factual. What is factual instead is that the basic knowledge for a first year student in economics that trade wars is a lose-lose game surprisingly remains something unknown for the Oval Office today.

Donald Trump appears to run the office as one would run a small fast food store, with no diplomacy, no protocols, ignorance and a chain of command that is as long as it can get from the CEO who is taking orders and sitting next to the employee flipping burgers.

Likewise, that’s also how Trump’s administration seeks to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine. With no respect to some 2,000 years of evolution in diplomacy, no respect to allies like the EU or its powerful members (France, Germany), pushing direct business with Russia like it is a supermarketing chain and making a complete fool of Zelenski at the Oval office with numb nuts questions like “Do you own a suit” in what seemed like a parody or an idiotic reality show reel.

This is now how things are done today in the world, especially if you are the biggest economy on the face of the earth? Ignorance should have been overruled by scientific and factual knowledge by the people consulting the orange king at the royal courtyard. As a matter of fact, it is those people owning one suit more than Zelenski who actually hold the lion’s share of responsibility of saying Yes to All, being the lovable Yes Men.

Trump’s tariffs against China as well as the ones against the EU are complete and utter madness. The world will just run out of all the previous gains of any growth after the dinosaur era of COVID-19. We are moving fast toward recession, Trump is the pilot and there is no co-pilot in Salvador Dali’s plane. How scary is that?

Unless Trump will undo all that in a single Executive Order in front of the cameras with a long signature and a longer red tie, if and only if the Wall Street stock exchange starts slapping MAGA in the face, hopefully.