While the media hurries to award Trump a diplomatic “win” for agreeing to a meeting that American presidents have been turning down for decades—US-North Korea summit without preconditions—there are some other world leaders who would also like a word. Only Trump would probably not want to hear what they have to say.
Bewilderment, along with anger and frustration, has rippled across the capitals of U.S. allies — countries that figured, no matter the bumps in relations with Washington, they would wind up on the same side against China in any dispute over steel or unfair trade practices. And yet suddenly there is talk of a trade war between the United States and its supposed friends.
Donald Trump’s “America First” policy already had allies around the globe scurrying to reach agreements that excluded the US from trade deals. On Thursday, eleven nations—including Japan, Australia, Canada and Mexico—signed the Trans-Pacific Partnership, despite the US dropping out of the the arrangement.
Trump imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum Thursday only a couple hours after 11 nations signed the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a sweeping trade agreement that was once thought to be dead after Trump withdrew the United States from talks.
The TPP does not include China, and was in fact originally created in an effort to provide a “counterweight” to China’s leverage in the Asia-Pacific. With the agreement in place, tariffs are actually falling … for those countries involved. And just because the US didn’t sign, doesn’t mean the agreement won’t have a significant impact on US exports.
While American beef faces 38.5 percent tariffs in Japan, for example, beef from Australia, New Zealand and Canada will not.
Trade agreements can be good or bad. Tariffs can be good or bad. Both require both careful implementation and trade-offs. No one wants to open the US market to goods manufactured without concern for worker rights, safety regulations, or the environment. No one wants to “level the playing field” only by forcing labor to the lowest common denominator and lifting regulations that protect health at both ends of the agreement.
A good trade agreement not only generates increased wealth for all involved, it does so by demanding improvements for workers, protecting the environment, and promoting human rights. It can be argued that agreements like TPP or NAFTA failed to accomplish these goals … but pushing America to the sidelines of global trade is a poor formula to either improve agreements or improve the lives of workers in America or elsewhere.
Once it goes into effect, [the TPP] is expected to generate an additional $147 billion in global income, according to an analysis by the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Its backers say it also bolsters protections for intellectual property and includes language that could prod members to improve labor conditions.
Since the United States withdrew from the TPP, China has been angling to get in. Trump’s tariffs are only making that seem like a more attractive proposition.
Even those leaders who have grown accustomed to the zigs and zags of the Trump White House say this could be different. The consequences of Trump’s targeting other priorities — the Paris climate agreement and the Iran nuclear deal chief among them — have not had an immediate, concrete effect. But the tariffs could soon put citizens in ally nations out of work, and if a trade war escalates, all sides could feel the pain, officials from Brasília to Brussels to Seoul say.
Workers are already protesting the United States in Sao Paulo. Meanwhile, as Trump makes a show of protecting the steel industry, the immediate impact of the tariffs will be felt by US workers in the last industry he made a show of “digging.” Because much of the coal used in making Brazillian steel, is mined and exported from the United States.
With Trump raising barriers while everyone else is working to lower them, there’s a very good chance that the United States will be surrounded by walls—and not just on the southern border.