Donald Trump is a ‘demagogue’ whose China tariffs are punishing ordinary US citizens, says American economist Joseph Stiglitz
World-renowned economist said the US president’s moves toward an all-out trade war with China will result in a ‘pervasive tax’ that will hit America’s poor hardest
World-renowned economist Joseph Stiglitz called US President Donald Trump a “demagogue” whose moves toward an all-out trade war with China will result in a “pervasive tax” that will hit the poorest Americans hardest.
Speaking to the South China Morning Post on the sidelines of the China Institute Executive Summit in New York, the Nobel Prize-winning economist and Columbia University professor said: “We have a demagogue who’s a president.”
Trump, for political reasons, is trying to reverse a 70-year process of international agreements that have created an industrial chain “where borders don’t matter”, said Stiglitz, a member of the Democratic Party who served many years in the Clinton administration.
“Any prudent manager or CEO thinking about the construction of a supply chain would have to ask the question, ‘What if?’
“That’s a fundamental change to the way the global system operates and it is adding a significant extra cost, and those extra costs are borne by ordinary citizens,” the economist said. “Eventually they get reflected in prices.”