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Donald Trump’s tariffs are big, fat American snake oil meant to win re-election, not solve real problems
- The days when the mercurial president seemed to have focused his tariffs on China are long gone. With the election looming, he now sees tariffs as an all-purpose tool to assert his will
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It has become clear that tariffs are the “snake oil” of salesman Donald Trump and his US administration. I am reminded of the endearingly eccentric father-in-law in the 2012 film My Big Fat Greek Wedding, who spent much of his time dispensing a spray of glass cleaner as a cure-all for every minor medical complaint. Except that the US president’s obsession with tariff snake oil is anything but endearing.
Trump is now unsatisfied with a big, fat ugly trade war with China that looks set to inflict significant harm on the global economy – the International Monetary Fund last week estimated that the conflict will slash 0.5 per cent off global growth for 2019, with a recession in prospect if saner minds fail to prevail.
He has, over the past weeks, threatened Australia with tariffs on aluminium exports, and threatened tariffs on Mexican exports unless the government of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador miraculously staunches migration across the Mexican border into the US.
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Less widely noticed, Trump has banished India from its Generalised System of Preferences, which allowed low-income countries to export most of their goods tariff-free into the US. Trump demands that India open up its e-commerce market and market for medical devices, clamp down on generic drugs and open up to more US dairy products.
In the wings, but soon to re-emerge, is the US threat to slap tariffs on auto exports from Germany, Japan and South Korea. I am sure Trump would love to add China to this list, but China exports so few cars to the US that the impact would be politically insignificant.
The snake oil salesman’s final flourish was in the UK, where Trump and his extended family alternately schmoozed at Buckingham Palace, egged on Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and other British Brexiteers, and allowed his foot-in-mouth ambassador Woody Johnson to flirt about a future US-UK trade deal in which “everything would be on the table” – including better access for US pharmaceutical companies to Britain’s health care system.
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