Thursday, April 03, 2025

Trump's New Protectionist Age

The Wall Street Journal editorial board: Blowing up the world trading system has consequences that the President isn't advertising.

More

It would be entertaining to watch Murdoch's Journal bust a gut over the tariffs and the Trump crash, except we're the ones who all suffer. Gift link: Trump's New Protectionist Age www.wsj.com/opinion/dona ...

[image or embed]

-- Jeff (Gutenberg Parenthesis) Jarvis (@jeffjarvis.bsky.social) April 2, 2025 at 7:32 PM

Comments

More: The end of U.S. economic leadership. Britain played this role through World War I, but it was too weakened by war to continue. The U.S. didn't take up the leadership mantle until after depression and World War II. U.S. leadership and the decision to spread free trade produced seven decades of mostly rising prosperity at home and abroad. The U.S. share of global GDP has been stable at about 25% for decades, even as industries rise and fall.

That era is now ending, as Mr. Trump adopts a more mercantile vision of trade and U.S. self-interest. The result is likely to be every nation for itself, as countries seek to carve up global markets based not on market efficiency but for political advantage. In the worst case, the world trading system could devolve into beggar-thy-neighbor policies as in the 1930s.

The cost in lost American influence will be considerable. Mr. Trump thinks the lure of the U.S. market and American military power are enough to bend countries to his will. But soft power also matters, and that includes being able to trust America's word as a reliable ally and trading partner. Mr. Trump is shattering that trust as he punishes allies and blows up the USMCA that he negotiated in his first term.

A major opportunity for China. The great irony of Mr. Trump's tariffs is that he justifies them in part as a diplomatic tool against China. Yet in his first term Mr. Trump abandoned the Asia-Pacific trade deal that excluded China. Beijing has since struck its own deal with many of those countries.

Mr. Trump's new tariff onslaught is giving China another opening to use its large market to court American allies. South Korea and Japan are the first targets, but Europe is on China's list. Closer trade ties with China, amid doubts about access to the U.S. market, will make these countries less likely to join the U.S. to impose export controls on technology to China or to ban the next Huawei.

#1 | Posted by qcp at 2025-04-03 08:41 AM

Kind weird how Russia and China are SO much happier with Trump than Americans are... it's almost like he planned it that way.

#2 | Posted by Corky at 2025-04-03 12:07 PM

Related:

This Could Get Much Uglier': The Fatal Flaw in Trump's Trade War

Trump's radical tariff program is aimed at restoring U.S. manufacturing greatness. He's getting in his own way."

www.politico.com

#3 | Posted by Corky at 2025-04-03 12:14 PM

it's almost like he planned it that way.

#2 | POSTED BY CORKY

It seems like China and Russia did the actual planning.

#4 | Posted by donnerboy at 2025-04-03 12:18 PM

#4

Yeah... Lil' Donnie is downright servile when around bigger billionaires than himself.

#5 | Posted by Corky at 2025-04-03 03:14 PM

Dumbfuq Donnie, a complete idiot.

#6 | Posted by LegallyYourDead at 2025-04-03 07:15 PM

... Blowing up the world trading system has consequences that the President isn't advertising. ...Well, duh.


Pres Trump is transactional. That is, what can I get NOW.

He has not seemed to be even the least bit concerned about the longer term ramifications of what he does.

Tariffs against our allies?

How will those allies now regard the United States in the future?

As an adversary or a friend?

#7 | Posted by LampLighter at 2025-04-03 09:02 PM

Maybe this is appropriate advice to Pres Trump ...

Gunbunnies - Put a Tail on Your Kite (1990)
www.youtube.com

#8 | Posted by LampLighter at 2025-04-03 09:05 PM

Why did Krasnov Fats spare Russia?

#9 | Posted by reinheitsgebot at 2025-04-03 09:19 PM

@#9 < ... Why did Krasnov Fats spare Russia? ...

Pyotr Krasnov facts for kids
kids.kiddle.co

... Pyotr Nikolayevich Krasnov (Russian: " ; 22 September (old style: 10 September) 1869 " 17 January 1947), sometimes referred to in English as Peter Krasnov, was a Don Cossack historian and officer, promoted to Lieutenant General of the Imperial Russian Army when the revolution broke out in 1917, one of the leaders of the anti-Bolshevik White movement afterwards and a German collaborator who mobilized Cossack forces to fight against the Soviet Union during World War II.

The major motivation was the brutal repression of Cossacks by the Soviet government, e.g., the portioning of the lands of the Terek, Ural and Semirechye hosts, forced cultural assimilation and repression of the Russian Orthodox Church, deportation a ...



#10 | Posted by LampLighter at 2025-04-03 09:25 PM

This is Krasnov.

foreignpolicy.com

#11 | Posted by reinheitsgebot at 2025-04-03 09:29 PM

He's a ------- idiot.

#12 | Posted by LegallyYourDead at 2025-04-03 10:09 PM

This isn't "protectionist." Stop describing this as if it's just a normal different of opinion.

This is a global shakedown using economic terrorism. Period.

#13 | Posted by jpw at 2025-04-04 11:40 AM

Soon, the rest of the world will have access to new cool consumer technologies from China, South Korea, Germany, etc. that we won't even see in the US. We already see this happening, where the rest of world buys the latest BYD model and the rest of us here in the states are stuck with overpriced Teslas that haven't seen a upgrade or redesign in a decade.

Just like it was in the USSR. Which is the point, right Trumpers?

#14 | Posted by horstngraben at 2025-04-04 03:15 PM

China should shut Musk's factories down - or nationalize them.

#15 | Posted by YAV at 2025-04-05 09:59 AM

Democrats as a party oddly love Communist China and they hate freedom and policies that differ from their own. They welcomed internal Hong Kong turmoil and helped set up the Covid turmoil.. Democrats have always fed the trough of demographic divide and enthusiastically welcomed non Christian values into America that will always lead to turmoil be it in USA or Europe, Sweden or others. They thrive on national divide that their huckster leaders use to deflect and mask their inherent corruption.

#16 | Posted by Robson at 2025-04-05 07:56 PM

Drudge Retort Headlines

Huge Crowds at 'Hands Off' Protests (95 comments)

Stock Market Has Wiped Out $9.6 Trillion Since Inauguration (32 comments)

Texas Measles Outbreak Nears 500, Spreads to Day Cares (21 comments)

Trump Oversells Success of $200 Million Houthi Airstrikes (20 comments)

China Retaliates with Sweeping Tariffs on U.S. Goods (20 comments)

Massive Storm Risk for South and Midwest Not Over (18 comments)

Felon Freed by Trump Charged with Assaulting Child (17 comments)

Board Game Industry Will Be Crushed by Tariffs (16 comments)

Billboard: 'Tariffs Are a Tax' (15 comments)

A Few Takeaways from Elon Musk's Utter Humiliation in Wisconsin (14 comments)