Given the all-out declaration of global trade war we feared, it wasn’t actually the worst possible outcome: the first two days of Donald Trump’s presidency saw only the US’s three biggest trading partners threatened with tariffs by the end of next week. Unless you are Mexico, Canada or China, you have the luxury of waiting until April 1 to really start worrying, because that’s when the various reports Trump commissioned on trade and investment are due.
What do we read into this timing and sequencing? Nothing, obviously. Nobody knows anything. The palace politics explanation is that the business-friendly advisers around Trump have deterred him from going for tariffs across the board straight away, but then taxes of between 10-25 per cent on a third of the US’s imports aren’t exactly what the American economy needs.
Broad-based tariffs remain a clear and present danger and taxes on goods — from China in particular — could have global knock-on effects. Given weak Chinese domestic demand, a trade war might exacerbate the supposed China Shock 2.0, in which cheap exports of high-tech Chinese goods undercut manufacturers everywhere. Chinese exports diverted from the US by tariffs, the argument goes, will slosh around the global economy swamping advanced and emerging market economies alike. And if others start reacting with their own protectionist measures, could trade wars end up being Trump’s most successful export?