Steel yourself for pricing wars over new Trump tariffs
Someday President Trump will be gone. With his departure along with his enablers, liars, flunkies and family, a sense of normality will return to America.
For many, the moment cannot come soon enough.
But perhaps more troubling than the chaos and sleaze each day his leadership brings is the misguided economic legacy he will leave behind.
Never before has there been an administration so deaf to the facts that it fails to hear the world and its warnings.
The latest Twitter-created crisis has potentially disastrous effects on Britain’s, already devastated and once proud, steel industry.
With a shortsightedness worse than Mr Magoo, Trump has proposed a plan to slap tariffs of 25% on imported steel and 10% on aluminium.
“Trade wars are good and easy to win,” he awoke to tweet before his morning coffee cup of joe had a chance to stabilise his thoughts.
The US leader says he is adamant no nation will be saved from his plans.
Prices on just about everything –
Rachel Shenton and Chris Overton and, inset, Maisie Sly cars, lorries, food cans – will rise.
Then comes the inevitable retaliation, thanks to the aluminium can of worms Trump has just opened.
Already, the European Union has announced plans to slap tariffs on US motorcycles, bourbon, blue jeans and more.
Others will follow suit, choking off foreign markets when countries around the planet ought to be ripe targets for American producers.
In a fit of pique or political panic, Trump’s latest war will produce casualties throughout the US economy but it is not only in America where the injuries will be felt.
Other trading countries hit too.
Nthat comes in will be
ow, through Trump’s blind vision of wanting to protect his own workers at the cost of millions of American consumers, he places steel industries in other countries in grave danger. There will be the damage caused to the sector’s sales to the US.
The domestic market and other export markets in other countries will also likely take a hit through the fallout from competing nations diverting their produce.
Any tariffs imposed on foreign steel would be hugely misguided and deprive US manufacturers of some of the most specialist steel in the world.
But it is Trump’s chaotic leadership style that gives me hope that he may backtrack on his plans.
The President says his tariff measures won’t be final for a week, which means there might still be time for damage control.
So with more flip-flops than Bondi Beach, let us hope Trump performs another of his now infamous U-turns as we hope his flunkies will for once show some true “metal” warning him of the harm he will do. Donald Trump
Trump’s latest war will produce casualties across the US economy