Good, good.PFVA wrote:In the meantime the EU and India sign the trade agreement.
As I've been saying, the only real way to de-escalate and end this Trump tariff nonsense is to take his favourite toys away from him. If the rest of the world works together - through trade deals - to satisfy their needs, then they should just increasingly cut America out of global trade.
Then Trump can stand there shouting "10% tariffs! 20% tariffs! 40% tariffs! 30000% tariffs!" all he likes, because no-one's actually bothering to attempt importing into America anymore.
Yes, America is a lucrative market, as they are the richest country on planet Earth. But, that said, it's a very, very unequal distribution of wealth - so the averages are skewed and you've got to ask yourself, as an importer, if the average American consumer really is worth more than a consumer elsewhere, if you're not specifically targeting luxury goods to its insanely over-valued billionaires. And they are only 5% of world population.
We'd rather not, and the instant America sees sense and disposes of the nonsense of their Orange King, then we'll happily welcome them back to the international fold.
But the world absolutely can do without them. We can cut them out, and instantly de-fang Trump's tariff threats - and then we should resist, as it won't be economically necessary and just political posturing, to retaliate with our own tariffs, so America can still export outwards and we won't show prejudice to that.
Basically, what I'm getting at is that this really isn't a major imposition. Because America's almost entirely a service industry economy - tariffs on services, like YouTube, Facebook, Hollywood movies, etc. now that would hurt massively. But American cars? A bottle of Jack Daniels? Harley Davidsons? It's not a big deal to (hopefully, only temporarily) lose that shit.
Indeed, part of Trump's whole insane rationale is that the world is "scamming" America because we export cars and things to them, but they barely export anything particularly useful - in terms of goods, as services is very different - to the rest of the world. With his toddler mind, he thinks that's "being scammed" when it's just normal economic trade that things aren't always symmetrical.
Sir Alan is grossly simplifying, of course, for the purposes of dramatic presentation, but the underlying point is real and salient. That cutting America out of global goods trade really wouldn't make that much difference to anything:
And if, indeed, he wants to make foreign cars more expensive to artificially force Americans to buy American cars, then let him do so. As they're a bit shit, and every American knows it, so they'll just pay the extra expense, be poorer and, in the economic doldrums, Trump will never win a fair election ever again (even ignoring that, legally, he should not even be able to stand for election for a third time anyway).
We shouldn't panic, as the rest of the world. If Trump wants to weirdly impose sanctions on his own country, then we should follow the sage wisdom of "if an enemy is making a terrible mistake, then don't interrupt them".
Give him what he wants. Isolate America out of global trade, and just sit back and watch them sink themselves into the ground. Then stand by - as a good friend and ally - to help them recover and rejoin the world, when they've gotten past this weird "fascist toddler" phase.
(though to be clear, I very much appreciate the sentiment). Bruces voice has clearly aged, theres not a lot he can do about that.