Donald Trump laid the kindling for a global trade fire. It must not have ever occurred to him that his bizarre tariff scheme would cause countries to respond, or he did not care. Now, those nations have fought back. It appears that POTUS may have just lit the match that causes a trade war to explode across the entire world.
Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue came out strongly against 45’s tariffs, when he spoke to Reuters:
‘The administration is threatening to undermine the economic progress it worked so hard to achieve should seek free and fair trade, but this is just not the way to do it.’
There are three million members in the largest business organization in the nation. Typically, the Chamber works well with Republican presidents, and it started out praising Trump for his business tax cuts last December.
Since then, things have gone downhill. The former leader of the free world has set a global trade war in motion, Reuters reported:
 ‘Billions of dollars in tariffs targeted at China, Canada, Mexico, and the European Union, saying such moves are needed to offset trade imbalances.’
In response, the Chamber implemented an anti-Trump trade tariff policies campaign. It showed the damage Trump has done and will be doing on a state-by-state basis and how that will affect U.S. voters’ wallets.
The president’s closest trading partners naturally retaliated against his tariffs. Trump’s whole plan has “unsettled financial markets.”
Apparently, he thinks that Canada and the U.S. have a trade imbalance. Whoever is talking in Trump’s ear has been seriously wrong.
The man sitting in the Oval Office also put tariffs on our country’s largest trading partners: Mexico, China, and the European Union. As a consequence, these nations have been fighting back.
Mexico added tariffs to pork imports. The EU set tariffs on $3.2 billion of American imports to its 28 members. This included Harley-Davidson motorcycles and bourbon.
Canada also began setting tariffs on $12.6 billion of good manufactured in the United States. This was in retaliation to Trump’s tariffs on U.S. steel and aluminum imports from our neighbors to the North. Then, Trump called “uncle” and gave in.
One of the American farmers’ largest exports to China has been soy beans. In response to the president’s ill-considered acts, China began telling its farmers to start growing more soy beans. In addition, China intends to add a new 25-percent tax on the imported crop.
The Chamber’s campaign against Trump included the analysis of how U.S. states would be impacted. Reuters wrote:
‘For example, the Chamber said Texas could see $3.9 billion worth of exports targeted by retaliatory tariffs; Tennessee, $1.4 billion; and South Carolina, $3 billion.’
In the past, officials in the Trump administration have convinced him that states that backed him in his 2016 bid for president would be adversely affected. The threat of losing those hard-hit states over tariffs caused him to back off his intentions in the past, but may not now.
Relations between the Chamber and the White House have become dismal with Trump’s latest plan. Hopefully, its campaign will make an impression upon the president of these United States, and he will reconsider starting a global trade war. However, POTUS has come very close to a point of no return.
Featured Image via Getty Images/Chip Somodevilla.
