{"id":80667,"date":"2025-04-10T07:22:37","date_gmt":"2025-04-10T05:22:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistaidees.cat\/analisis\/diari-de-les-idees\/idees-dactualitat-el-brogit-i-la-furia-la-guerra-dels-aranzels\/"},"modified":"2025-04-10T07:50:28","modified_gmt":"2025-04-10T05:50:28","slug":"idees-dactualitat-el-brogit-i-la-furia-la-guerra-dels-aranzels","status":"publish","type":"newspaper","link":"https:\/\/revistaidees.cat\/en\/analisis\/diari-de-les-idees\/idees-dactualitat-el-brogit-i-la-furia-la-guerra-dels-aranzels\/","title":{"rendered":"Idees d&#8217;actualitat &#8211; The sound and the fury: the war on tariffs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Donald Trump has claimed that 2 April, the day he presented his executive order on global tariffs \u2014now subject to a 90-day moratorium following the massive fall in the value of Treasury bonds\u2014, will be remembered as a turning point in US history. Unfortunately, this date is more likely to be remembered as a fiasco &#8211; along with 24 October 1929 (the stock market crash that started the Great Depression) and 15 September 2008 (the collapse of Lehman Brothers) &#8211; than as the beginning of a new era of prosperity for the US and the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In his now famous chart displayed on the White House lawn, the left-hand column showing the alleged tariffs that other countries apply on US goods is totally false. If we focus only on the case of the European Union, the tariffs it applies on American products is less than 3%. In fact, the figures presented by Trump are equivalent to the United States trade deficit, calculated by taking as a reference the value of the deficit with a given country divided by the total imports from that country, and dividing the result by two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">These numbers do not correspond to the World Trade Organisation (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wto.org\/english\/tratop_e\/tariffs_e\/tariff_data_e.htm\">WTO<\/a>) tables, which are calculated from actual bilateral trade data between the US and each country. For example, in 2023, the US exported 347 billion euros worth of goods to the EU, and with tariffs on these exports, the EU collected just over 3 billion euros. In other words, the tariffs collected corresponded to 0.86% of total US exports of goods. For its part, the EU exported goods worth 503 billion euros to the United States, which US customs authorities collected 7 billion, 1.39% of that value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Trump now justifies imposition of new tariffs on the basis of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.congress.gov\/crs-product\/R45618\">International Emergency Economic Powers Act<\/a> of 1977, which allows the president to regulate international trade in an emergency when the country is under threat from abroad. The idea that the richest and most powerful country in the world, with a booming economy and a 4% unemployment rate, is in urgent jeopardy is just plain bizarre. It seems that the US president&#8217;s plan is to transform his country&#8217;s economy into something similar to the model followed by many South American economies in the 1970s: a protectionist model, with non-transparent democratic and judicial institutions. The results were not good, and the countries that followed it know how difficult it is to reopen the economy in the face of resistance from vested interests in certain sectors that have benefited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the face of the worst attack on the fundamentals of free trade since the 1930s, and to confine itself to Europe, the EU has three options for response: not to take retaliatory measures and seek to negotiate tariff reductions and exemptions, perhaps through monetary policy adjustments as suggested by a European Parliament <a href=\"https:\/\/www.europarl.europa.eu\/RegData\/etudes\/STUD\/2025\/764186\/ECTI_STU(2025)764186_EN.pdf\">study<\/a> published a few weeks ago; to activate targeted measures, similar to those already taken by the European Commission in response to the 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum that Trump had imposed before 2 April; or to take proportionate retaliatory measures against US imports, while also activating the <a href=\"https:\/\/ec.europa.eu\/commission\/presscorner\/detail\/en\/ip_23_6804\">Anti-Coercion Instrument<\/a>, a framework designed to escalate the European response to external economic pressures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The first option has the advantage of being cheaper, although it would probably be understood as a sign of surrender, leading the Trump administration to demand further concessions, not only because victory would be achieved without resistance, but also because new European investment to circumvent tariffs, together with tax cuts, would perpetuate the US trade deficit. In this case, it would be enough for Trump to respond with a strong escalation to make the EU back down. That is what happened with the EU tariffs on American bourbon: the US responded with the threat of 200% tariffs on imports of European spirits.&nbsp; In the end, many experts favour the option of proportional and scalable retaliation, which could include services. While tariffs imposed by the EU would have a high immediate cost for everyone, they could be phased in gradually to give importers time to find substitutes. Exemptions could also be enacted (e.g. for certain medicines and raw materials that cannot be easily substituted) to reduce costs for businesses and consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">However, this new situation brings not only risks but also opportunities for the countries concerned and, in the case of Europe, it may be an opportunity to reduce the drain of European savings flows to the United States, a phenomenon that has deprived Europe&#8217;s business sector of an important source of income. The distrust generated by Trump&#8217;s policies is also a key element in abandoning the naivety in defence and security matters in which Europe has lived comfortably for decades. It is not a matter of spending 5 per cent of GDP on defence as demanded by Washington, but of rethinking European weaknesses and dependencies, and becoming more independent on key issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There is reason to believe that the European model is better positioned than those of the US, Russia, or China to be considered as a benchmark, not least as a pioneer in the regulatory and sanctioning fight against the tech giants. The EU is also able to weave other trade relations, as it has the largest and fastest growing network of trade agreements in the world through the treaties with the Mercosur countries and Mexico, and the progress of negotiations with India, the Gulf countries, Indonesia, Malaysia or Thailand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The US protectionist offensive also offers the EU and Latin America an opportunity to better articulate their asymmetric but potentially fruitful relations. The EU and Latin America and the Caribbean together account for 21 per cent of world GDP. The EU is currently the region&#8217;s third largest trading partner, after China and the United States, and is above all the main source of foreign direct investment, valued at some 800 billion euros. The exchange of goods and services was $369 billion between 2021 and 2022, an increase of 39% compared to the previous decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In this new context, the strengthening of ties prior to Trump&#8217;s return takes on relevance. In 2024, the EU announced investments of 45 billion euros in Latin America and the Caribbean through the <a href=\"https:\/\/commission.europa.eu\/strategy-and-policy\/priorities-2019-2024\/stronger-europe-world\/global-gateway_en\">Global Gateway<\/a>, mainly in the lithium, renewable energy, green hydrogen, connectivity, transport and health sectors. Moreover, last December, the EU and Mercosur (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay) signed after lengthy negotiations an agreement that seeks to eliminate trade barriers on the basis of a tariff reduction, facilitate investments, as well as support the green and digital transition, thus creating a large trade area with 700 million inhabitants and a GDP of around 22 trillion dollars. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In short, the very name \u2018Liberation Day\u2019 with which Trump baptised the event seems to be inspired by Orwell&#8217;s novel <em>1984<\/em>, in which there is a Ministry of Truth, which rewrites history to make it consistent with the lies of the leader; a Ministry of Peace, which promotes war; and a Ministry of Love, where the political police act to torture the protagonist. It is the day that Trump has locked the US into a trade policy from which it will be difficult to escape and which, contrary to the expected effects, may give an advantage to its competitors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><sub>Photography: Donald Trump signs an Executive Order on the Administration\u2019s tariff plans. Wednesday, April 2, 2025. Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok. Public domain..<\/sub><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><sub>Maria Fari\u00f1a, Marta Dato and Maria Fuxi Cervera, trainees at the CETC, have participated to this issue of <em>Idees d&#8217;actualitat<\/em>.<\/sub><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Donald Trump has claimed that 2 April, the day he presented his executive order on global tariffs \u2014now subject to a 90-day moratorium following the massive fall in the value of Treasury bonds\u2014, will be remembered as a turning point in US history. Unfortunately, this date is more likely to be remembered as a fiasco &#8211; along with 24 October 1929 (the stock market crash that started the Great Depression) and 15 September 2008 (the collapse of Lehman Brothers) &#8211; than as the beginning of a new era of prosperity for the US and the world. In his now famous\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":80627,"template":"","category_newspaper":[634],"segment":[],"subject":[],"class_list":["post-80667","newspaper","type-newspaper","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category_newspaper-634"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Idees d&#039;actualitat - The sound and the fury: the war on tariffs &#8211; IDEES<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/revistaidees.cat\/en\/analisis\/diari-de-les-idees\/idees-dactualitat-el-brogit-i-la-furia-la-guerra-dels-aranzels\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Idees d&#039;actualitat - The sound and the fury: the war on tariffs &#8211; IDEES\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Donald Trump has claimed that 2 April, the day he presented his executive order on global tariffs \u2014now subject to a 90-day moratorium following the massive fall in the value of Treasury bonds\u2014, will be remembered as a turning point in US history. 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