What is the customs war of Donald Trump? “China, fool!”
Trump’s customs swing clearly shows that the US goal is not a trade war with the whole world, but a blow to China. Threats threatened to the right and left are to discourage you from standing on the side of China, so that in the event of Beijing only Russia remained. Moscow’s position, however, is getting weaker, because Trump’s unstable markets react with a rapid drop in oil prices from which Putin lives. The voids in the Kremlin treasury may lead him to make concessions in the matter of Ukraine.
Trump lasted a barely a week and withdrew from the customs war with the whole world. This statement full of malicious satisfaction is to indicate another after trying to get along quickly with Moscow the failure of American administration. And what if the goal of all this hysterical operation with lifting the US from knees by raising his duties was not a trade war with the whole world?
There are many indications that it was only about China. Everything else served to terrorize possible resistance to the threat of disking the American economy from China. The cries of the horror that Trump demolishes the foundations of the world economy gave way to the relief of relief when the White House put a tariff ax aside, allowing to keep the face of a terrified and internally divided in the Customs War with the USA in Europe.
The only country that did not feel this relief is China, which Trump threw a tighter loop on his neck.
Suspending the sharpened customs regimes for all countries, except China, the White House has raised customs rates for the Middle Kingdom to sky -high levels of over 120 percent.
This happened with the minimal opposition of the Apostles of Free Trade with the EU. Because also not about Europe, which has no alternative to trade relations with the USA, in all this confusion.
Just as before, the goal of publicly disappointing the President of Ukraine and being managed to Moscow was not to sell Europe to Putin, but forcing the EU to take care of his own security seriously, so the psychedelrama with customs duties served to pacify US trading partners so that Washington had a free hand in a clash with China.
Crisp Chinese market
When Europe absorbed the details of the Tariff Liberation Day, as Donald Trump called his accurate crusade, the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sachez called the EU to say goodbye to the US market and switch to China. Manufacturers of French and Italian wines or cheese have certainly glowed because they know well that Chinese consumption does not grow to the American heels.
This is the main weakness of China and the main advantage of the US, on which Trump and his people base their strategy: China is the largest producer of the world, but the internal market still has poor. Capitalism built by the communist regime subsidizing export and controlling everything – from key companies to the Juan course – cannot match the free market.
