Donald Trump is escalating his threats to increase tariffs on imports if he wins a second term in the White House, reviving fears of renewed trade wars that hit the global economy during his presidency.
The Republican candidate, seeking to win blue-collar votes in swing states pivotal to November’s presidential election, has doubled down on his protectionist rhetoric, delivering blunt warnings of tariffs to US trading partners including the EU.
On Saturday, Trump went further, promising tariffs of 100 per cent on imports from countries that were moving away from using the dollar — a threat that could engulf many developing economies too.
“I’ll say, ‘you leave the dollar, you’re not doing business with the United States. Because we’re going to put a 100 per cent tariff on your goods,’” he said at a rally in Wisconsin.
“If we lost the dollar as the world currency, I think that would be the equivalent of losing a war,” he told the Economic Club of New York on Thursday.
He wouldn’t be the first person to employ tariffs in order to encourage domestic development. A big part of the American Revolution revolved around northern industrial towns fighting for protectionist laws to discourage UK dumping their industrial surplus into colonial markets. Pennsylvania iron-mongers were some of the fiercest opponents of the British merchantalist system.
Prior to FDR, the primary method of US tax collection was tariffs on imports. And a big reason the policy ended was due to Europeans immolating all their industrial capital across two World Wars.
These goons are rarely so far-sighted. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s simply taking money up front from domestic lobbyists in the extraction industry. A big pivot to domestic fracking happened thanks to Bush/Obama/Trump era fossil fuel companies deluging state and national legislatures and governors with contributions to open up more public land for drilling.