Don’t provoke potty president

DONALD Trump’s toxic brand of economic nationalism was always going to wreak havoc eventually.

The belligerent US president’s decision to impose damaging steel tariffs has already drawn a furious reaction from France to Canada.

And it has the potential to cause chaos here too.

Scotland’s steel industry is not the big employer it once was but remains an iconic part of the nation’s industrial heritage that must be protected.

Those working in our last remaining steelworks at Dalzell in Motherwell will be extremely unsettled by what is happening in Washington.

But worse damage could come if the EU get involved in a tit-for-tat trade war with the man-child in the White House.

The trade commissioner in Brussels yesterday confirmed plans for retaliatory tariffs on American products, including bourbon whiskey.

That sent alarm bells ringing in Edinburgh, where the worry is this could all end up hurting the Scottish whisky industry.

The US is whisky’s biggest market, worth almost a £1billion last year.

Politicians must be careful not to provoke Trump into an escalating trade war that would be damaging to all involved.

The whole sorry saga also underlines the foolishness of free market right-wingers who think a new trading relationship with the US will be a benefit of Brexit.

Trump simply cannot be trusted to behave reasonably or with any kind of consistency.

It is a sign of Britain’s weakened and isolated state that we are so desperate to have him as an ally.