Category Archives: Trade policy

Here’s my interview and a written elaboration – in lieu of a transcript:

1. Trump’s “tariff shock” on everyone was intended mainly to force negotiations. Especially this is to insure no country:
   • Functions as a transit state for Chinese exports to get into the USA without paying crippling tariffs, or
   • Provides a Chinese-owned manufacturing site in their country with the same aim of accessing the USA market without crippling tariffs..
     • Trump’s Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers Miran and Treasury Secretary Bessent have been fairly clear about this, if one listens in detail.
2. Trump Tariffs’ impact on Europe – Deindustrialization. German auto sector as an example.
   • While Trump and his circle militate against “deindustrialization” of the USA accomplished over the past few decades by the growth of Chinese manufacturing capacity and the export of these products into the USA market, Europe has an immediate problem, however, with the current advance of its “deindustrialization” or, as some more optimistically say, its new industrial “evolution”. [Some references from major German economic institutes on deindustrialization: IFO Institute, IW Institute, Kiel Institute, the latter of which has evolved a bit on this].
   • Taking the German auto industry as an example, it was already suffering from well known, chronic problems of Germany’s own making. These include two decades of low infrastructure investments, poor digitalization, high taxes, and being subjected to arbitrary government mandates to reduce diesel sales and increase battery electric vehicle production, and etc. ON top of this, German industry has also suffered high energy prices due to the countries exceptionally complex all-renewables energy transition model. On top of this came suddenly, from 2021, the Russian energy war, which denied Europe half of the cheap gas that European, and especially German industry was relying on to compensate for the high-cost of the all-renewables transition.
   • This energy war – and on the heels of the Covid shock – was devastating to German manufacturing and heavy industries, providing the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. In my assessment at the time, this was the point at which German industry’s problems of multi-faceted uncompetitiveness morphed into a form of deindustrialization,
   • Germany is in its third year of recession. However, this is not just a recession. Note that the VW, the German auto firm, for example, in September 2024, began mass layoffs for the first time in 87 years in September 2024. BASF is in a similar conundrum. In my view this is a systemic, secular problem over and above any present economic downturn.
   • So, the point of painting this detailed picture of the crisis of German automobile manufacturing, as an example, is that one can now really only imagine what a sharp knock-on effect Trump’s auto tariffs and his other tariffs might have on top of all this.  This is devastating. Already the CEO of Mercedes has said if the tariffs continue he will move the production of the cheaper models to the USA. Already one of the largest exporters of cats from the USA is a German factory.
3. My response (critique) of Jeff Sacks‘ dollar-decline predictions
   • I was asked to listen to a clip from Asharq/Bloomberg’s earlier on-air interview with Nobel Prize economist, Jeffry Sachs, about his prediction that the US dollar would lose its reserve currency status in this decade and be replaced by regional currencies.
   • My take was that there was little new (or old) factual evidence of this, plus Trump’s tariff shock is not necessarily a long-term tactic. So, I commented that Sachs has had this theory for a long time, an it is nothing new. (I think it is fair to say he is quite sympathetic to China in various interviews, for some years now.) So, I simply said I was not surprised he says this, as he has for a long time.
   • However, I explained (with a bit more factual detail than Sachs, I hope) that indeed, even Trump’s theorist Miran and Bessent too agree that the tariffs strategy is designed to reduce the value of the dollar (its aims is precisely a weak dollar), and this should normally mean that the dollar loses its reserve currency status, its preferred use in the world, that these Trump theorists have a plan for a “Mar-a-Lago” or similar accord for states that are seen as being key, close allies, who would agree to peg their currencies to the dollar, and that they should be expected to agree as they need to trade into the USA market.. This is based on the observation that the USA market has a special status in the world. If this were to pass, they theorize that this would in fact preserve the special, preferred reserve status of the US dollar.  Trump likes this as he has said that if this status is lost, then the destiny of the USA is to be a “third world” economy. **Continued at GlobalBarrel.com ….