It was shocking to read, in the FT of all places, Peter Navarro’s tendentious claims to justify America’s trade war on the world (“Trump’s tariffs will fix a broken system”, Opinion, April 8).
Contrary to what he says, America faces no national emergency — except the one now caused by Trump — and has not been transferring wealth into foreign hands. For if so, how has the US meanwhile beaten the world on virtually every economic measure bar inequality, and become richer relative to Europe, in Trump-Navarro’s world the most shameful of cheaters?
It is bizarre that he cares only about goods trade, disregarding the services that have made Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk the world’s richest men. It is not true that the World Trade Organization’s “most favoured nation” rule makes trade one-sided. Just the opposite. And it is not true that America’s trading partners maintain high, uniform tariffs across the board. As he surely knows, the EU’s average most favoured nation tariff rate is 5 per cent, against the 3.3 per cent figure he quotes for America, and would be lower but for barriers against Chinese cars. Yes, the EU does have a 10 per cent tariff on car imports, but on all cars not just US ones, and the US has for decades had a 25 per cent tariff on imported light trucks. On hormone-treated beef, the 1998 WTO ruling allowed America to impose retaliatory sanctions, which it did, and negotiations between the US and the EU have led to several compromises in the meantime. And poorer countries, like Vietnam, that do have tariff barriers and have sweatshops, are simply following a proven American model of successful capitalistic development.
It is beyond time for the Republicans and Wall Street billionaires who brought Trump to power to force him to change course, before the “economic nuclear winter” feared by his hedge fund backer, Bill Ackman, comes to pass. What I would say to Ackman is that this is your doing: now own it.
Bill Emmott
Dublin, Ireland
