this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2025
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What Canada, Mexico, Japan, the UK, and the European Union should do in response to Trumpโ€™s grossly irresponsible tariffs (robertreich.substack.com)
submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
30 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

What should other nations do?ย My strong recommendation to Canada, Mexico, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the European Union is to join together to create a free trade zone that excludes the United States, imposing at least a 10 percent tariff on all imports from America.

They should also threaten to limit American banksโ€™ access to their public stock markets, put limits on what their citizens can invest in American companies annually, and increase taxes and regulations on American digital platforms.

They will be tempted to negotiate and do so individually. They should not. They need to negotiate from a position of strength. A non-U.S. free trade union will give them that strength.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

In that context I think tariffs are absolutely valid. In particular, as you mention, because China is subsidising their EV market and thus discounting the export price. A tariff should raise the price of the imported good such that the local good can compete - and we've seen this with extreme tariffs on Chinese EVs. Trump actually led the way on this in his first presidency, proving he is the proverbial broken clock. Now Europe also has tariffs on Chinese EVs.

Ideally, this should also involve ring fencing the tariff revenue and exclusively re-investing it into incentives for local businesses to pick up the slack of the imported businesses. This rarely happens, but it should.

This doesn't work when tariffing the US, though. The US is often already more expensive for the things people import from there. People buy US goods and services because they want the US version; there is no better alternative. The tariff just makes US products even more expensive, costing buyers more. The only thing it does is raise revenue for the government.

In other areas even tariffs against China have been meaningless. If China sells a trinket for 1/10 the price of local industry, then even a 100% tariff would mean the Chinese product costs 2/10 of the local price. People will still buy the Chinese product over the local one, but now they just pay more. Maybe they buy less, so Chinese businesses make less money, but they'll probably pay more overall. The government get this extra money. This is what Trump is doing in the US with his general tariffs on China, there's no plan behind them and they're all but meaningless - the only thing they do is raise tax revenue for the government.

If the only thing a retaliatory tariff does is raise revenue for the government, then it's no better than what Trump is doing.

A good tariff should minimise the effect at home and maximise the effect against the foreign country the tariff is meant to penalise. I don't think that's viable with import tariffs against the US, the effect at home just isn't worth the minimal damage it would do to US businesses.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Yeah we should focus on key industries that we can gain from. A general tariff is pretty insane.

We just gained a global discount thanks to trump on our imports on products that we can utilise adequately.

Thanks for the explanation