Donald Trump’s announcement on Wednesday, April 2 or the increase in import tariffs to the United States can be considered brutal, irrational or counterproductive. But, in the long term, this acute tariff walk mainly suggests that the US president intends to end globalization.
American tariffs from the ‘McKinley rate’ of 1890
With Trump’s second presidential term in office, the United States has turned its back to 80 years of liberalization of trade, by once again imposing tariff barriers.
The great depression of the 1930s led to more strict protectionist measures that are implemented on both sides of the Atlantic, praise depression to the point of weaving democracies. The winners of World War II decided to abandon this approach, instead of striving to build fixed multilateral agreements aimed at opening the borders to trade. In this spirit, 1947 saw the signing of the General Agreement on Rates and Commerce (GATT), the precursor of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which was established in 1995.
At the same time, the United States forged the very narrow commercial ties with its Mexican and Canadian neighbors, creating a massive free trade zone with the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, which became the United States-MexicoCanada.
The ‘Kindleberger spiral’
In just five years, from 1929 to 1933, the global trade war ended up reducing world trade to one third of its previous level.
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