The “Liberation Day” that Donald Trump has been promising for several weeks finally arrives. This Wednesday, April 2, the US President is due to present his major plan for customs prices to the press, one of his main campaign promises. “This Wednesday, it will be the day of the liberation of America, as President Trump so proudly baptized it so proudly. The president will announce a pricing plan that will make the unfold disloyal commercial practices that have been riding our country for decades. He does so in the best interest of the American worker,” said Karoline Leavitt, spokeswoman for the White House on Monday.
But from this project, it is still difficult to know that they will be the guidelines. Quite simply because the American president himself did not yet seem to have made his choice as to the implementation of this increase in customs duties, while his advisers and ministers pleaded for different projects. “However, this plan remained largely mysterious, because Donald Trump and his administration have launched a number of constantly changing and contradictory proposals,” said Cnn.
The track of reciprocal customs duties …
However, on the eve of these announcements which may well have a colossal impact on international trade, the American press believes to know a little more about the announcements that the American president must make this Wednesday. THE Wall Street Journal Even said that “President Trump said he had arrested a plan for his last customs duties expected this week”, without “revealing what he had decided”, retaining the mystery for the announcements on Wednesday.
Two tracks have so far seemed to be emerging. The first: that of country pricing increases by country, and in particular reciprocal towards states judged as “unfairly” the United States. It still seemed privileged this Monday evening by the American president himself, as the Washington Post : “This Monday evening, Donald Trump had suggested several times that customs duties would be reproductive ‘, that is to say directly proportional to those taken by foreign countries on American exports, and said that many countries would not be affected by import duties”.
For the White House, the great interest of this approach would be to be able to use these customs rights as a negotiation tool directly with the various states concerned. Negotiation … or rather pressure, with Washington threatening with potentially exorbitant customs prices, each country refusing to comply with its requests. But the fact remains that this track would allow each country concerned to initiate discussions with the American administration individually, and potentially escape customs increases that can severely damage its economy.
… Abandoned in favor of a universal rate?
However, this track may already have been abandoned. THE Washington Post Affirms that the American president, pushed by a whole part of his administration and his advisers, may have changed his shoulder rifle in order to opt for a much more radical option: a generalized increase in customs prices on all imports, and what the countries matter where they come. People by fact of these discussions have said to the American daily that “the president has put pressure on a universal customs tariff in recent days, believing that it was simpler than the specific measure for each country”. This fixed rate could be around 20 %, and this in the vast majority of imports entering American soil.
One of the arguments put forward by certain advisers to push in favor of this universal taxation and not country by country would be “the fear of bypass of these regulations, including the Taires of Turs where customs duties would be lower”, continues the Washington Post. But it would also hit louder: according to the White House, this measure, coupled with additional customs duties in sectors such as automotive and pharmaceutical products, “would generate more than 6,000 billion new federal revenues, and would be equivalent to the largest increase in taxes for decades,” reports the American daily. A way to transcribe the policy of “America first”, “for which each of the clans is fighting with the American president”, as the said Wall Street Journal.
A strategy that divides
If this track of universal customs duties can still be upset by the permanent procrastination of the American president, it would undoubtedly be that with the most economic consequences in the United States and in the world. This plan which risks “causing a shock wave on the stock markets and in the world economy”, estimates the Washington Post. According to Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s and interviewed by the American daily, “if permanent customs duties took effect during the current quarter and triggered strong reprisals from the trade partners of the United States, the American economy would almost immediately enter a recession that would last more than a year and would increase the unemployment rate above 7 %”. Without forgetting the risks of a marked price increase in reaction to this decision. Warnings widely swept by the Trump administration, at least by the most radical fringe.
But the disagreements which agitate the entourage of the president are not only limited to the way of implementing this increase in customs duties. As the New York Timesit is also the goals behind this trade war that Donald Trump seems to trigger that questions to the top of the state. “Donald Trump described customs duties as a negotiation tool likely to force other countries to remove their obstacles to trade, which would ultimately result in a drop in customs duties. But he also talked about customs duties as a means of increasing the revenue and bringing the supply chain to the United States, which would result from a lasting duty of customs.”
In other words: does this increase in customs duties really aim to increase American revenue, and to encourage the industrial sector to reinvest in the United States rather than relocating? Or are they only a threat to ultimately When they decrease, after negotiations with the various countries concerned? Until the entourage of Donald Trump’s entourage, the opinion does not seem to be clear: it is however this choice that the announcements of Donald Trump will follow this Wednesday. “The supporters of the president highlighted these two contradictory objectives, but it is the president who, in the end, will decide the way to follow,” said the New York Times.
“Everyone here will align themselves with their choice”
Only one man to decide a decision that could transform international trade almost without common measure: this is how “Liberation Day” seems to be looming for Donald Trump, who should ensure that his administration follows his conclusions. “In the end, this time, it is up to Donald Trump to make the decision and everyone here will line up with his choice,” also said to the Washington Post Wilbur Ross, who was Secretary of State for Commerce during the first term of the American president and who was part of the discussions as to the implementation of these customs tariffs.
Donald Trump’s America now seems to be done as follows: the all-powerful president decides, his advisers and ministers struggle to defend the consequences, so harmful can they be. The rest of the world to choose its walking march in response, which should not miss this Wednesday once the announcements of the tenant of the White House pronounced.