Donald Trump has initiated his announced war of tariffs in what the rest of the world, as pronounced by the Polish Prime Minister and currently responsible for the rotary presidency of the European Council, Donald Tusk, has described as “The stupid commercial conflict in history”. No one benefits; No one will be unscathed and both consumers and companies will suffer their impact.
The tariffs were Trump’s favorite exchange currency in his first mandate. And there follows the strategy, if there is any. The president of the United States has frequently promoted them as an economic incentive to force foreign suppliers to transfer production and services to their country or simply bend in geopolitical and/or strategic issues.
We already commented here for the Trump announcement of your plans to Increase tariffs on the manufacture of foreign chips. If concrete, there will be a generalized Price technology in all world technology, both consumer and professional, which will cause a sales decrease and thereby reduce the margins of income and benefits of companies.
China responds to the tariff war
After commercially attacking Mexico and Canada, Trump has done the same with China “In response to Beijing’s failure to prevent the flow of illegal drugs”. As expected, The Asian giant is not going to bend and has already announced the counterattack.
Beijing has taxed US exports of liquefied coal and natural gas with a 15% tax and has imposed a 10% tariff on oil, agricultural equipment and the high range of car. The Chinese authorities have also added US companies such as PVH CORP (owner of the luxury brand Calvin Klein) and the Illumine genetic sequencing company to the list of restricted entities. At the same time, it has applied new controls to exports of products related to tungsten, a strategic material.
Google in the Diana
Another of China’s responses to the Trump tariff war (10% tariff to Chinese products) has been the beginning of an antitrust research on Google. “Because it is suspected that Google violates the antimonopoly law of the People’s Republiccan be read in the translated version of the statement to which you have had access TechCrunch.
It must be explained that, although Google’s search and internet services have been blocked in China since 2010, the company still maintains operations mainly centered on advertising. Certainly, the measure against Google is not implemented for economic reasons, but it has a very strong symbolic burden And it is a ‘notice to navigators’ of what can happen to other American technology. Last week we saw the fall of sale of iPhone mobiles precisely for the Chinese market and the resolution of the American Division of Tiktok, another point of tendion, is still pending.
The tariff war initiated by Trump «He seriously violates the norms of the World Trade Organization»they say from China. “It is not only useless to solve your own problems, but also damages normal economic and commercial cooperation between China and the United States”.
Tariff war against Europe?
The European leaders who celebrated an informal summit yesterday, also showed their impressions of what the world news in economic matters is.
“Of course, we are also preparing on our side, but what is clear is that there are no winners in commercial wars”said the successor of Josep Borrell as a high representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs, Kaja Kallas, which apostilled that “If war is unleashed, who will laugh on the other side will be China”.
The German Foreign Minister, Olaf Scholz, was more explicit and said that Europe “You can design our own issues and we can also react with tariff measures to tariff measures”while the French president, Emmanuel Macron, was more direct: “If Europe is attacked in the commercial plane, it must be respected and react”.
