Liberation Day or Return to the Middle Ages? Trump bends it like the infamous President Hoover of the 1930s Great Depression

As we write distinctly from most of the outlets out there, we won’t start with the elephant in the room, the tariffs. We will start instead with the last scene of yesterday’s “Liberation Day” promulgation of the notorious Trump administration. He rambled on and he propagated infinite trade wars for an hour with his long red shiny tie, he signed with his longer signature the executive order and then…

Hence pens

The most powerful man in the world before leaving the Rose Garden podium of the White House, he rushed to grab two dozens of signature pens. They were lying on his desk in a small box next to the podium and he manically rushed to grab as many as a man could fit in his palm and gave them to a member of his cabinet to store them. It could be worse, he might as well put them in his own pockets. One can interestingly enjoy that scene together with the entire Doomsday manifesto here.

But still, this pen incident detail is gold in undestanding Trump’s mindset and, given his constitutionally omnipotent position, the US administration’s tactics as well. It is exactly like one goes to a congress and starts usurping everything possible, from pens and mouse pads to pretty much anything that could have use or value like a bag or candy. This is called kleptomania and is a psychosis but also a phenomenon that more than often congress organizers or hotel staff have jokes about, the tendency of people to make theirs anything that is provided in abundance for free. A psychologist cannot infer that the entire world suffers from Kleptomania but she can infer that Trump has no ethical or moral constraints in grabbing all pens possible in front of 8 billion people.

Is this a joke like what TV character Ross used to do when staying at hotels at the most successful blockbuster Friends series and then people were laughing at it as an odd, peculiar and cheap thing to do? No!

Definitely this one calls for crying, not laughing. Trump and his Yes Men courtyard will pretty much put their hands on anything offered in the next four years and they will place it in their pockets or someone else’s pockets. And that, includes trade of course.

So, bizarre Kleptomanic insticts at the Oval Office and Yes Men attitudes, coupled with propaganda and grabbing 20+ pens on camera, led to what the entire world witnessed yesterday as an end to an era. An era of globalization that offered little or no frontiers for business, an era of cultural diversity, an era of prosperity and reason. The Orange King and his couryard just imposed on the world absolute protectionism, insecurity, poverty and the mere return to the reason that brought to the world 2 World Wars, recession!

My God MAGA

Yesterday’s promulgation of US trade wars against every country in the universe, including large blocks of countries like the European Union, vanished 100 years of development in the science field of Economics. It is as if there was no progress, as if we learned nothing. This is as serious and existential as if we didn’t evolve to Homo Sapiens but Neaderdal spieces reign.

And all of that taking place at the Rose Garden or the King’s Courtyard with people clapping, laughing, grabbing pens, making stories on Instagram and having a great time, just like the Chernobyl residents in 1986 at the moment of the explosion were watching the so very beautiful and romantic colours in the sky of the explosion, moments before they were handsomely vanished from the face of the earth.

Though one cannot ignore that this MAGA propaganda, that would make Paul Joseph Goebbels so envious or proud, is adamant that all the huge tariffs imposed yesterday will benefit the US. It really doesn’t take a PhD in Economics but instead a first year student in the discipline can get that this is not true. Global trade and thus the world economy before yesterday were based on mutual agreements and FTAs whereby countries were trading goods freely or almost freely. This was the mere cashflow main source of every state in the world, led to a level of prosperity for the country, the citizens’ livelihoods and supported democracies or even obscene regimes. Now, with all those extravagant tariffs that the largest economy in the world imposed the countries’ cashflow will bleed, the economies will be ruined and the people around the world will suffer from austerity, poverty, lack of education and all the bad things in life. Too subtle?

Nevertheless, the MAGAs My God do believe in America being Great Again after those tariffs. That would be great for America if true, only that it is false. Some people in the other side of the Atlantic say that this will bring factories back to the US, which is good for the Americans to find jobs. It is true that some companies who care for the purchasing power of 340 million people in a developped economy might do so. However, 100 years ago that was the case and Taylorism and Fordism failed to provide prosperity both in the US and around the world. In other words, it might be so that some company factories will relocate to the US but a 340 million people market was never enough for the US to become number one economic power globally. Instead, the US achieved that thanks to an anachronistic word of the past now which is called globalization.

Just to make it even more clear, the moment a factory comes back to the US and gives jobs to the US market, which by the way is something that the US never needed as unemployment is non existent or as low as 4%, it is that moment the factory/company will shoulder gigantic expenses to maintain that business in a developed economy with all the staff and all. At the same time, that factory in the US will not be able to benefit from economies of scale by exporting abroad, because the entire world will respond with similar very high tariffs, so they will pay more and more taxes or else have very large expenses again.

So, they will lose money. So, companies will go bust. So, there will be great recessions all over the place. So, the Americans will be unemployed. So, the Americans will not be able to afford a house, a car, groceries. Too subtle?

Can it be that there is no economist at the White House? No, it is just that nobody can speak his mind.

So what will EU do now?

In this very sad momentum for the world, the European Union needs to realize that the old buddy at the other side of the Atlantic has proven a foe. For sure the EU is preparing a huge retaliation with huge tariffs too that will inescapably escalate further the meltdown of the world’s economy fast. Besides that, the EU needs to focus on its tariff free block of 27 countries. It is only through changing priorities and focusing on the EU market that the block can pull this through.

In addition, the EU has better reconsider its foreign trade strategy. There is a huge global trade war going on with the US and Brussels clearly cannot afford another one with the world’s second economy, China. Perhaps coming back to the free trade negotiation table with China is the wisest thing to do right now, instead of imposing extravagant tariffs on things like electric cars and so on and so forth. Once the EU thought they would be considered a good sport by the US for doing so, but now this relationship has overtly changed. Strenthening thus the EU-China relations now would be a safety net and revitalize the EU economy at a moment that the entire once almighty transatlantic partnership is in ruins.

Apart from the immediate change of 180 degrees in the EU trade policy, one thing is for sure for the average European citizen; brace yourselves, stay put, don’t buy the car or the house you dreamt of or you worked hard for because the grand recession is coming and it will make Lehman Brothers and COVID-19 seem like a joke.