China, EU likely to retaliate as Trump boosts tax Americans pay for imports
(Originally published April 3 in “What in the World“) You have to hand it to Trump’s comedic instincts: when he goes for a pratfall, he commits.
The Idiot-in-Chief stood in White House Rose Garden to launch his D-Day assault on the American economy: an across-the-board 10% tariff on all imports but those from Canada and Mexico, and then double-digit tariffs on top of those on imports from dozens of countries, including a 44% additional tariff on goods from Sri Lanka, 46% on those from Vietnam, and 49% from Cambodia. Trump’s new 34% tariff on Chinese imports brings the base tax on goods from China to 54%, before adding the additional tariffs imposed on Chinese products by former Pres. Joe Biden and Trump in his first term. Fitch calculates that Trump has thus raised the overall U.S. tax on imports to 22%, the highest since 1910.
U.S. President Donald Trump says he’s merely leveling the playing field, imposing tariffs that bring U.S. tariffs up to what other countries impose on U.S. manufactured exports. But he’s basing his retaliations on numbers for foreign tariffs that Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman says are plain cuckoo. Cambodia imposes a 97% tariff on American imports? According to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the highest Cambodian tariff is 35%.
The USTR’s “2025 National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers,” which the White House cites in its official announcement of Trump’s latest tariffs, also cites numerous, qualitative non-tariff barriers. It provides no figures, however, on just how much of an additional tax these impose on U.S. imports above explicit tariffs. Some have determined that the rates were calculated by taking each nation’s trade surplus with the U.S., dividing that by its exports to the U.S., then halving that figure.
Trump’s tariffs are unlikely to bring manufacturing back to the U.S., boost U.S. exports or open foreign markets further to them. On the contrary. Retaliatory tariffs are likely to make it tougher for U.S. exporters. Europe has already formulated a “strong plan” for retaliatory tariffs, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned Tuesday. China has also vowed to impose “countermeasures.” Many countries are likely to strike against not only U.S. manufactured goods, but its cherished exports like banking, management consulting, and cloud computing—the services in which the U.S. runs a nearly $300 billion trade surplus with the rest of the world.
They’re also likely to hit domestic, U.S. manufacturers that rely on imported materials and components too low-end to warrant production in high-cost, high-wage America. Think parts for U.S. pick-up trucks, or bits and bobs used to make the wind turbines Trump thinks kill whales.
Another target for retaliation is likely to be an export the U.S. rarely talks about. Trump long threatened to abandon America’s European allies to Russia if they didn’t spend more on their own defense. Apparently, he didn’t think they’d take him literally. But after his assault on European exports, and his abandonment of Ukraine and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Trump and his clown car of cretins are somehow surprised that the allies have started their own “buy domestic” campaign on weapons—one of America’s biggest exports. Last month, the European Commission unveiled a proposal called ReArm Europe that includes borrowing borrow 150 billion euros ($162 billion) to lend back out to individual European governments for arms purchases.
Wait, what? Selling billions of dollars of overpriced weapons to your allies is—and apparently Trump & Co. didn’t realize this—the most immediate direct dividend of maintaining the U.S. security umbrella. Having belatedly realized they have torpedoed this lucrative post-war protection racket, White House officials have reportedly been telling Europeans they’d better keep buying U.S. weapons—or else. Or else what? More tariffs? According to sources cited by Reuters, White House officials have warned Europeans that failure to keep buying American arms would be seen as “inappropriate.” “Transatlantic defense industrial cooperation makes the Alliance stronger,” a State Dept. spokesman said.
As if the sh*t-storm from the White House isn’t enough, real storms are also raining down with more intensity.
A new analysis by nonprofit Climate Central found that hourly rainfall intensity in 130 of 144 U.S. cities has climbed by an average of 15% since 1970 as climate change’s rising temperatures pull more moisture into the atmosphere to fall back to earth as rain. Like the 38cm of rain forecasters are warning could flood the U.S. Midwest this week as an intense storm system moves in.
That does mean, of course, that in 10% of U.S. cities, rainfall intensity has fallen. Rainfall intensity fell 3% in New York and 1% in Los Angeles, America’s two largest cities. But it rose 8% in Chicago, 22% in Houston, and 8% in Phoenix.