Former President Donald Trump unveiled a key talking point for his 2024 campaign – an “America First” trade plan which would include universal tariffs on most goods imported into the US.
Trump laid it out in a Feb. 27 statement, which called for a system of universal baseline tariffs on most foreign products, while rewarding American domestic production. The new policy will “tax China to build up America,” according to Trump.
“Joe Biden claims to support American manufacturing, but in reality, he is pushing the same pro-China globalist agenda that ripped the industrial heart out of our country,” Trump said in a video titled “Pro-American Trade to End our Reliance on China.”
Trump claims his plan is a matter of “both economic and national security,” and would “implement a bold series of reforms to completely eliminate dependence on China in all critical areas.”
As Rabobank notes;
In short, his proposed “America First” policy would phase in a system of universal, baseline tariffs on most foreign products, the revenue from which would reduce taxation on firms producing in the US. Moreover, tariffs “would increase incrementally depending on how much individual foreign countries devalue their currency.”
Honestly, I am not shocked. I am sure no other markets Daily uses the word “mercantilism” as freely as this one has for around a decade – I had to explain the word in 2015, and then how pre-WW2 US presidents were mercantilists; when Trump floated his first tariffs, I argued phasing them in to allow onshoring FDI before imported goods got more expensive would be logical; ‘Weaker currency = higher tariffs’ was factored into our report on ‘Balance of payments -and power- crises’; and clearly there is still US momentum to change things even if means breaking things, which we factored into our ‘The World in 2030’ report – which we may arrive at early; moreover, as argued last year, and this, ‘Bretton Woods 3 Won’t Work’.
Watch the video below:
According to IraqiNews, which cites a Baghdad news outlet, the Iraqi Supreme Court has issued an arrest warrant for former US President Donald Trump for the murder of Iran’s Quds Force commander, Qasem Soleimani, on Iraqi soil.