He had 10,000 tariffs,
And he marched them down again.
But the original Duke in the English nursery rhyme never did go back up that hill, and Trump is equally unlikely to do so after seeing his declaration of what amounted to a trade war on the rest of the world blow up in his face. It is a measure of his hubris that he did not foresee that he could not antagonise so many powerful people and countries at the same time, a group that included America’s leading oligarchs, notably Elon Musk.
But the upwards of 100 countries which will soon start negotiating new tariff regimes with the US believe that Trump blinked first and showed weakness this week when he “paused” the reciprocal tariffs. This will make them less likely to make concessions to the US in negotiations than they might otherwise have done.
Pundits correctly identify this as Trump’s “Liz Truss moment”, when the whole US financial system began to quiver and totter. Fear of an even greater financial meltdown began to become self-fulfilling. By 9 April, the The Wall Street Journal calmly observed that “the market has switched to ‘sell everything American’ mode”.
The amateur, shambolic way in which tariffs were calculated erodes confidence in the US
Trump’s inner coterie must have known the joke by former president Bill Clinton’s chief strategist, James Carville, who once famously said: “I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the President or the Pope or as a .400 baseball hitter. But now I would want to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.” Evidently, the White House did not think things could get this bad this fast, but when it did they were duly intimidated, as Carville predicted.
Though the US economy is far bigger than that of the UK, it can still be permanently damaged by the belief that the White House may have another bout of self-destructive irrationality. The amateur and shambolic way in which the reciprocal tariffs were calculated and rolled off further erodes confidence in the US as a stable place to do business.
square PATRICK COCKBURN
Trump has abdicated America's superpower statusRead More
Trump did not march all his 10,000 tariffs back down the hill as in the rhyme, since he has raised those on Chinese exports to an astronomical 125 per cent. This extinguishes the will to trade between the world’s two largest economies. Given that half the economic growth in the world since 2000 has occurred in the US and China, this conflict will have huge negative repercussions on the world economy. China has vast resources, political stability, and says it will “fight to the end.” Loss of its exports to the US is a blow, but not a fatal one or something for which it is unprepared.
Trump may have retreated from the brink, but uncertainty about US future intentions get ever higher.
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