A bouquet of flowers to pass the pill. The staging was carefully studied. It is in the rose garden adjoining the White House that Donald Trump will today unveil the details of his “Liberation Day”: an unprecedented salvo of customs rights striking dozens of countries and thousands of industrial products that enter American soil daily. In the history of the country, this protectionist fever thrust has only one equivalent: the Hawley-Smoot law, promulgated on June 17, 1930, which established customs surcharges on more than 20,000 goods made worldwide, precipitating America in the Great Depression.
Everywhere, in Asia or Europe, response to the Trumpist War Declaration are in the making. The European Union, by the voice of the president of the Ursula von der Leyen commission, does not hide her intention to draw targeted retaliatory measures which she had imagined using one day against China, but which she will handle today against her former ally.
Ironically, this outbreak of American protectionism does not sign the end of free trade, or that of international trade. It could even encourage targeted countries to seal new alliances to find and secure new outlets for their own productions.
Catch up
Who, in Europe, to criticize this commercial treaty signed by Ursula von der Leyen again last December with the Latin American countries of Mercosur? A treaty that opens the door to European manufacturers from a market to nearly 750 million consumers. Even French farmers have been silent. At the Commission, the projects of trade agreements have been emerged in an emergency trade agreements left fallow for years, or even decades. Thus, the first partnership on investment and trade between the EU and South Africa has just been signed. Likewise, a global free trade agreement with India, in gestation for years, could lead by the end of the year, while negotiations are accelerating with Indonesia and Thailand.
Asia, too, wants to make up for lost time and compensate for potential export losses to the United States. On March 30, in Seoul, the South Korean, Japanese and Chinese trade ministers, relaunched a free trade area between these three industrial giants. For South Korea, the stakes are high since America became the country’s first trading partner last year, ahead of China, unheard of for twenty years. This sleep project from the pandemic aims to guarantee an environment for trade and investment “free, open, fair, non -discriminatory, transparent and inclusive,” said the three leaders.
At the subtle game of diplomacy, each word counts. The ambitions of these three Asian heavyweights are the reverse of Donald Trump’s protectionist breviary. By wanting to strengthen America, the “Maga” strategy of the American president may well succeed in isolating the country and weakening it economically. Trump, the sprinkler sprinkled?