Trump’s bullying of other countries will come back to bite him ...Middle East

Donald Trump has spent the week yet again pulling tariffs out of his hat. It has been more than three months since his self-proclaimed “Liberation Day”, when he first unveiled what he described as “reciprocal” duties on imports from nearly all of America’s trading partners. But his pledge to negotiate “90 deals in 90 days” to obviate the worst impacts of his trade war has come to nought, barring limited side agreements with the UK and Vietnam. So this time, the US President insists he means it: a range of new, massive duties will come into force on 1 August. 

Some of them, however, have absolutely nothing to do with trade, and instead are being used as punishing tools of American foreign policy.

Brazil, for example, was informed on Wednesday that it would face 50 per cent tariffs on exports to the United States, in large measure due to the “witch-hunt” that Trump claims the country’s authorities are pursuing against its former President Jair Bolsonaro. A close Trump ally, Bolsonaro is on trial for allegedly leading an insurrection to overturn the outcome of the country’s 2022 elections – and a plot to assassinate the current Brazilian President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

In his letter informing Lula about the tariffs, Trump described the treatment of Bolsonaro as “an international disgrace. This Trial should not be taking place. It should end…IMMEDIATELY”. 

It is not clear, however, that Trump has the legal authority to impose tariffs unilaterally, let alone tariffs that are based on his opposition to the legal process underway against Bolsonaro. The President has already lost one round at the Court of International Trade in New York, where judges unanimously ruled that his “Liberation Day” tariffs had exceeded his authority. A higher court allowed the administration to continue collecting duties pending a final decision that could take months to reach the US Supreme Court.  

Earlier in the week, the President threatened to impose additional tariffs of 10 per cent on all nations aligning themselves with Brics, accusing the non-aligned grouping that was founded in 2006 by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa of engaging in “anti-American policies”. Brics has now expanded to 11 countries, and Trump has accused it of being “set up to hurt us. Brics was set up to degenerate our dollar…and that’s Ok if they want to play that game. But I can play that game too.”

The President is no longer hiding behind claims that he is simply trying to rebalance trading relationships, nor even sticking to the loose definition of “reciprocal tariffs” that he used in July. Instead, this week’s letters to more than dozen world leaders made his intent clear: he will not allow any trade deficits to go unpunished, in a quest for completely balanced trading relationships that economists agree are unattainable.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, for example, was informed this week that Trump plans to impose 30 per cent tariffs on his country’s exports. In a letter published on Trump’s social media account, the US President wrote that “we must move away from these longterm and very persistent Trade Deficits…our relationship has been, unfortunately, far from Reciprocal”.

Ramaphosa, who was bullied by Trump during a contentious White House meeting in May, is told that in order to evade tariffs, his producers should simply “build or manufacture products within the United States”. Given that three of the country’s major exports to the USA. are platinum, gold and wine, it is impossible simply to shift operations from beneath South Africa’s soil to the United States, a stubborn fact that appears to find no purchase in Trump’s White House. South Africa’s capacity to import more American goods is also limited by the size of its economy, and the limited number of people sufficiently affluent to shell out for an iPhone or a Tesla.

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Trump’s announcement this week of 50 per cent tariffs on imports of copper stunned traders and sent the price of the metal to record highs in New York. Trump insists copper imports – never previously subject to any duties – are a “national security threat” and that he intends to revive America’s domestic copper industry. But not quickly, according to Dutch finance house ING. Noting that the US currently produces only 5 per cent of the world’s copper, it warned that “building new mines in the US can take up to 29 years due to lengthy, permitting processes” that themselves can take a decade to resolve.

Back in July, Trump’s Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, persuaded the President to agree to negotiations that presumed his trade war would not become a “forever” war. But this week, Trump has doubled down on an entirely protectionist future for the United States. His naked use of tariffs to punish countries and groupings with which he has a beef could force them to view the United States as a hostile trading nation. Some might even cast a fresh eye on membership of his hated Brics.

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