PNN – The Financial Times newspaper assessed US President Donald Trump‘s trade policies as a significant change in the process of “globalization” and wrote: Trump is trying hard to prevent this process from progressing.
According to the report of Pakistan News Network, the British media added: In 1987, Trump criticized the global economic mechanism and expressed his views on global issues in the American newspaper The New York Times and other newspapers in the country.
That year, as a 41-year-old real estate businessman, he criticized the negative impact of a strong dollar on American manufacturing, Japan’s trade surplus with the United States, and the cost of Washington’s military aid to its allies. His key message was to “end America’s trade deficit, cut taxes, and help the economy grow.”
Nearly four decades later, and emboldened by his victory in November’s presidential election, Trump now feels he is finally in a position to implement his plans and change economic history.
Trump seeks to dismantle decades of global economic integration. Many see the global trading system as having helped America become the most prosperous and successful nation in its history, but Trump claims that America has been a victim.
The US president, as he said on Wednesday, claims that his country has been “plundered, plundered, raped and plundered” by countries both friendly and hostile to Washington over the past five decades.
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According to a report by the research organization Budget Lab, Trump’s tariff attack, if fully implemented, would set back some aspects of the global trade mechanism by a century or more and would raise the average tariff on US imports to its highest rate since 1909.
Gary Richardson, a professor of economics at the University of California, said in this regard: Trump’s policies have obvious similarities to American policies in the 19th century, when tariffs constituted a greater source of revenue for the government than income taxes.
The Financial Times wrote: But the threat that still looms over the global economy is a return to the 1930s as a result of Trump’s actions. At that time, the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariffs in the US triggered a chain of international retaliations that are often blamed for deepening the Great Depression.
Richardson, an expert on recessions and the Federal Reserve, called Trump’s actions a “huge gamble” and said historical parallels show that things can go really wrong, and that’s scary.
Economists warn that trade tensions like those that occurred in the 1930s could not only be dangerous for global economies but also cause a broader breakdown in the cooperation that forms a large part of international politics.
“Trade wars are costly and retaliation is something that should not be underestimated,” said Christian Wandschneider, an economic historian at the University of Vienna in Germany.
Richardson also warned that trade disputes could spill over into broader global politics, increasing tensions that could lead to war. We are now seeing a decline in international cooperation in many dimensions.