In Expanding Trade War, Trump Digs U.S. into a Geopolitical Hole
The renewed tariff threats went down like a lead balloon in capitals across the world, including among some of the U.S.'s closest allies. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba described the developments as 'deeply regrettable.'
His colleague, Itsunori Onodera, policy chief for Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party, said Trump's decision 'to notify a key ally with nothing more than a single letter is extremely disrespectful, and I feel a strong sense of indignation.' Secretary of State Marco Rubio's decision to drop stops this week in Tokyo and Seoul during a quick Asia trip underscored the fresh tensions.
Various governments fitfully tried to hash out new understandings with the Trump administration to stave off the threatened tariffs. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said that the 30 percent tariff Trump sought to impose on his country as a 'reciprocal' measure was 'not an accurate representation of available trade data.' Thailand's acting prime minister, Phumtham Wechayachai, bemoaned the 'contradiction' as Trump's latest edict seemed to undo the progress made amid trade talks just last week.
Over the weekend, Trump also lashed out at the BRICS grouping of non-Western powers, threatening its 10 members and other partner states with additional tariffs because of the bloc being supposedly 'anti-American.' Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who was hosting a BRICS leaders' summit in Rio de Janeiro, rebuffed Trump's bullying. 'The world has changed. We don't want an emperor,' Lula said, adding: 'This is a set of countries that wants to find another way of organizing the world from the economic perspective. I think that's why the BRICS are making people uncomfortable.'
Trump had threatened 100 percent tariffs on the BRICS countries – which include putative Washington adversaries in Russia, China, and Iran, but also close partners such as India – if the bloc pursued attempts to break the global influence of the U.S. dollar. Some members had offered vague proposals for a new common currency to undercut dollar dominance, but the project has not got off the ground amid frictions within the bloc and wariness of courting Washington's wrath. Nonetheless, Celso Amorim, Lula's chief foreign policy adviser, said Trump's new threat 'reinforces the willingness of [BRICS] members and associated partners to chart our path and seek greater independence.'
That's a calculation other U.S. allies are making as well. On a visit to Britain, French President Emmanuel Macron warned of Europe's overreliance on the United States and China. 'If we want to build a sustainable future for all children [we have] to de-risk our economies and our societies from these dual dependencies,' he said. France wants 'an open world,' Macron added, gesturing to the 'strategic autonomy' for the continent that he has long championed. 'We want to cooperate, but not to depend.'
The frustrations and concerns being aired by world leaders are borne out by public sentiment. A Pew poll published Tuesday found that a significant proportion of citizens of U.S. allies see Trump's America in a gloomy light. Majorities in Canada and Mexico view their neighbor as the 'greatest threat' facing their country, marking significant increases since a similarly worded survey in 2019. Further afield, more than a third of South Africans, 40 percent of Indonesians, 30 percent of all Turks, and almost a fifth of respondents in Japan – a treaty ally protected by U.S. forces – also singled the United States out for the singular threat it posed.
Trump and his allies cast their trade wars as a necessary effort to restructure global trade and bring more manufacturing home. Whatever the merits of their case, analysts see their approach as potentially damaging to the geopolitical interests of the United States. 'The president is determined to light a fire under those trading partners who he thinks are not moving fast enough,' Wendy Cutler, vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute and a former U.S. trade negotiator, told my colleagues. 'But to hit two of our closest allies [Japan and South Korea] with high tariffs – particularly when we have benefited from cooperation with them on semiconductors and energy and chip building, and when their companies invest a lot in the United States – it is hard for me to circle the square here.'
'Many in Asia are going to ask, 'Is this how the U.S. treats its friends?'' Manu Bhaskaran, chief executive of Centennial Asia Advisors, a research firm, told the New York Times. 'Will there be permanent damage to American standing and interests in Asia and elsewhere through these crude threats and unpleasant language?'
Oliver Stuenkel, an associate professor of international relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo, said Trump's broadsides against the BRICS shook up a rather sleepy summit that various heads of state, including the Russian and Chinese presidents, had chosen to skip. The bloc had put out a careful joint statement that expressed disapproval of Israel's conduct of the war in Gaza and concern over the strikes on Iran, but did not call out U.S. involvement in either instance.
'Trump's attack was counterproductive,' Stuenkel told me. 'If his intention was to make countries move away from BRICS, I think that's probably not going to work out.'
Instead, Trump's antagonism might provide more impetus for the bloc's diverse membership to find genuine common cause. 'The rank unilateralism and casual abandonment of international law when it comes to regions such as the Middle East and arenas such as global trade call for a stabilizing countercurrent that can strengthen norms of cooperation,' wrote Sarang Shidore, director of the Global South program at the Quincy Institute, a Washington think tank. 'Global South states, as weaker actors, rely even more on international cooperation in their attempts to achieve security and prosperity for their people.'
During the Cold War and its initial aftermath, the United States worked with a host of partners to strengthen 'a community of shared values, compatible political ideals, international institutions and mutual support within those institutions,' wrote Andrea Oelsner, a professor of international relations at San Andrés University in Argentina.
'In recent months, the Trump administration has sharply eroded the country's credibility with these friends,' she added. 'And credibility and trust are much more easily destroyed than built … never mind rebuilt.'
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