OPINION: Trump Is Doing Exactly What He Promised

We should have learned from Trump 1.0 that Trump does everything, and more than he says. It is a question of “read my lips,” “watch my body language,” for the full sensory Trump experience.

So on trade and tariffs, reigning in DEI, China, migration, DOGE, Middle East policy, et al, his bite will absolutely be as bad as his bark, actually worse.

The one weird one here is China tariffs vs the rest of the world, where Trump has surprised/pulled punches with only a 10% tariff versus the 25% hits to Canada and Mexico.

How to read this one?

Is Trump soft on China?

Not if you look through his HR hires to key positions across the administration, whether that is Rubio, or Waltz, Navarro, et al.

Indeed, I think the bulk of the MAGA, and even old school GOP establishment, view China still as the existential threat to the US which has to be dealt with/taken out/down now to safeguard US global economic and military hegemony.

So this suggests China should expect much worse to come.

So why only 10% initial tariff push on China?

I think what we know about Trump is that he is a bully. He likes going after the weak, and what we have seen is I think Trump go after the weak/low hanging fruit. He thinks Canada, Mexico et al will easily fold - perhaps therein what he saw in his first term. I extend that also to his push to secure the Panama Canal, and push to get Denmark to rollover and give the US Greenland.

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I think in Trump’s world he wants to send a message to China, “look if this is the way I treat allies, like Canada, and the EU, and even Mexico, imagine what I could ultimately do to you, so fold now, and cut us the best deal ever.”

The problem with all this is that it assumes that Canada, et al will fold. But Trump’s bullying of Canada (the threat of subsuming Canada as just another US state was the final straw for most Canadians) seems to have spurned a rallying around the flag in Canada, which has already announced it will apply tit for tat tariffs on the US. This likely will encourage Mexico and the European Union to respond in unity. Even the Brits might join the resistance – albeit they might be considering offering Trump a free pass to Buckingham Palace, and a lifetime 10 shot discount on his golf handicap to spare the UK the worst of his tariffs bluster.

Unity in defiance of Trump will be damaging for all in the short term – risking a global recession and global market risk off. But the likes of Canada, Mexico, the EU, et al might just conclude it’s a case of united we stand, divided we fall, and if we all have any chance of fending off against Trump’s bullying and ultimately incredibly destructive global agenda, it is now or never.

Trump’s tariff agenda will be hugely negative for the global, and even the US economy, meaning less global trade, less global growth, higher inflation, and lower global living standards. We will all be worse off.

That seems to be the consensus amongst most credible global economists – but the MAGA guys seem to think that is a price worth paying to retain US global hegemony, and beggar the rest. Let’s see if the resistance in Canada, et al, succeeds, and how China plays this – does Beijing just order in Canadian popcorn to watch the Western world tear itself apart, or does it ride to the defense of globalization by coming in behind Canada and Europe, against the US?

Reprinted from the author’s tashecon blog. See the original here.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.