Raleigh, North Carolina, a few days ago: Donald Trump threatens to impose tariffs of up to 75% on Mexican goods if the Mexico City government does not stop the trafficking of illegal immigrants and drugs into the USA. “If they don’t stop this onslaught of criminals and drugs in our countryI will immediately impose a base tariff of 25% on everything they send to the United States of America with peaks of 75%.”
Perhaps before generalizing the nightmare of tariffs and predicting a catastrophe ready to strike world trade and enslave the economies of Old Europe in particular, it would be useful to reflect on those statements: if you cause damage to the United States you will pay a price very high.
Immediately after the proclamation of the electoral victory, Main stream commentators have been busy denouncing the epochal risk looming over world tradefor the re-proposal or increase of duties on certain types of goods for which the United States is a privileged interlocutor. The spotlight was immediately turned on the potentially most exposed sectors, in particular the food, automotive, chemical and fashion industries. The reference to typical Italian products is absolutely random.
Perhaps the great commentators have forgotten that the United States itself was born from a tariff war on products such as tea and sugar (the Tea Act which allowed the East India Company to sell tea to the colonies without the obligation to pay taxes or duties of any kind), coffee or wine. This allowed the company to sell tea at half the previous price and even more cheaply than that sold in England, establishing an English economic monopoly and creating the conditions for the revolt of the Colonies.
It was 1764. Perhaps a lesson too distant to be grasped by opinion makers today. Returning to the present day in a world characterized by sanctions on commercial traffic to and from those countries that are considered hostile (Russia, China, Iran) perhaps more than one question should arise about Europe and the consequences of possible tariffs or strengthening of existing ones.
Perhaps, in a world that for poor mortals does not present certainties that are the heritage of ideology applied to diversified realities, we should start from two assumptions that I believe can be shared: 1) duties are a tool to support countries considered friends and penalize those which, especially in foreign policy, follow different paths and strategies. Of course, from the perspective of the law of the strongest which, in any case, until the arrival of a new Messiah, regulates the delicate relationships on our Planet; 2) Trump and his advisors do not consider Europe a united continent and therefore a single counterpart. How can you blame him: he has no army, he doesn’t have a Parliament capable of deciding; he delegates his choices to an oligarchy of bureaucrats; does not share common choices which, also and especially in the economic and financial field, are the expression (once again) of a relationship of forces which up to now has favored the Franco-German axisthat axis that today, more than any other European reality, creaks.
Does Trump’s American threat loom over this Europeina? Or the American administration led by Donald Trump will probably have learned from the mistakes of the first mandate and will be made up of very loyal people (not presumed to be loyal as happened in the first mandate) not only to the President but to an economic and above all geo-political strategy. Which will concern Ukraine, Russia, the Middle East, China; it will concern the Mediterranean and those countries that have strategic importance for the USA as well as political reliability.
But let’s cut it short with a banal conclusion, not from advanced economists, but proof of common understanding: Is it so crazy to think of an American duty on French champagne that doesn’t loom over an Italy that proved to be more reliable even in the Ukrainian conflict and therefore saves the good old prosecco or the Italian methods champenoise?
In other words: the world must perhaps prepare a selective trade policy, with selective ad hoc duties to unite a group of reliable and important countries from a strategic point of view, regardless of what little Burssels may think in the new less military but more America’s economic “great again”.