Unprecedented American trade war gives new food to the growing distrust in Europe

Cheated by our oldest ally. For example, EU committee chairman Ursula von der Leyen expressed the reaction of Europe after Trump had set off his tax-fireworks this week.

You have to give it the American president: his ability to tender traditional US friends is unparalleled. The EU is saddled with an import levy of 20 percent, Japan by 24 percent, South Korea by 25 percent. In a sense, the United Kingdom gets a Brexit gift: the punishment for London is only half as high as for Brussels.

Russia and North Korea who constrain in the war against Ukraine go freely, as well as Cuba and Belarus. According to the White House, those countries are spared because there are already strict sanctions for it.

Gnuivers predicted Trump on Wednesday evening in the rose garden of the White House that in the coming period a parade of « Prime Ministers and Presidents, Kings, Queen and Ambassadors » will report to Washington to try to talk down the taxes. How much success they will have the ruler milder to vote. Trump likes to negotiate and perhaps that the emergency signals that the markets have issued still slightly slow it down. Stock index S&P 500 fell by almost 5 percent on Thursday. But Trump also called the US trading partners « cheaters » and « scavengers. »

Wall of protectionism

With his ‘Liberation Day’, Trump hopes to free the US from unfair competition by hiding his country behind a wall of protectionism and by making the world clear in a raw way who is the boss. The dizzying taxes seem to lack any economic substantiation, but are the starting shot of a trade war with uncertain consequences. It would, this year, could quickly cost a few tenths of a percent of economic growth, President of De Nederlandsche Bank, President of the Nederlandsche Bank, and the Netherlands and possibly even a volume point next year, he said in Nieuwsuur. Without trade war, the structural growth forecast for the Netherlands is 1.5 percent.

The levy fireworks is a blatant violation of the rules of the World Trade Organization WTO. The body affiliated with the UN, which has been around for thirty years and to which 164 countries are connected, was already under fire for a variety of reasons before Trumps re -election. But instead of repairing the system of consultation and arbitration, Trump chooses America First And lays the foundation for a war war, exactly a scenario that had to help prevent the WTO.

Trump is once again a pillar of the post -war world order. With democracy and legal rules, free trade belonged to the belief articles of the international order that the US built after the Second World War. That order was not perfect, but the US was added, as well as countries with an open economy like the Netherlands. Previously, Trump withdrew the US from multilateral agreements, put the knife in development aid and ordered an investigation into UN organizations.

Marco Rubio, Trumps Foreign Minister, was in the front row in the rose garden. He then took the plane to Brussels for his first visit to the NATO headquarters – also an international organization that has been in turmoil thanks to Trump.

Believe and blackmail

Trumps self-willed and non-transparent rapprochement to Vladimir Putin, combined with constantly belittling and blackmailing war president Volodymyr Zensky, sowed suspicion in Europe. It did not help that vice-president JD Vance attacked European democracy and visited Greenland with his wife, that Trump wants to annex. Trump has also said more than once that he does not want to defend European NATO partners who do not spend enough of defense.

The mutual trust in NATO certainly suffered from this, said a Brussels diplomat. Former NATO ambassador for the US, Ivo Daalder, wrote last month in trade magazine Foreign Affairs That it would not surprise him if Trump left the alliance and that he already undermined NATO.

Rubio tried to calm down Europeans. He found the reporting about an American withdrawal, he said during a short press moment. « The United States are in NATO, and are active in NATO as never before. The hysteria and hyperboles that I see in global and some domestic media are unfounded. President Trump has made it clear that he supports NATO and that we remain in NATO. »

He repeated that statement of support when he got the floor during the NATO meeting, Foreign Minister told Caspar Veldkamp afterwards. In Washington it had been said before that the US will not turn his back on NATO. « But it is good that we always hear that at all levels, » said Veldkamp.

COOKER OF NATO

As a senator, Rubio made a name for NATO as an advocate, but he now works for a president who likes to talk about the alliance with Dédain. What are his reassuring words actually worth? According to Veldkamp, ​​Rubio is ‘a little less angular’ than his president, but Veldkamp assumes that Rubio’s message is tuned in Washington. Veldkamp does, however, take into account that the US will eventually reduce their contributions to the European defense. « I consider that inevitable. »

Although import duties do not belong to the NATO field of work, the economic display of the US was the conversation of the day. During the meeting, one European minister joked that a reduction in economic growth as a result of a trade war makes it easier to achieve percentage goals for defense spending. Another snared that the money can be better spent on the purchase of equipment than to rising inflation, a possible consequence of a trade war.

The Norwegian minister Espen Barth Eide had once again checked the NATO treaty. While everyone was worried about whether Trump will defend the crucial article 5 – the duty to defend each other – if it comes down to it, it indicates that Article 2 commits allies to pursue friendly international relations, as well as stability and well -being.

Eide: « It is important not to forget. If we want to have the means to build our defense, we need economic growth and protectionism does not help us further. »

NATO-Secretary-General Mark Rutte was not tempted to comment on the taxes afterwards, but a violation of Article 2 did not find the ‘Resocest of the global trade order’ as Rubio described ‘Liberation Day’ not.

Correction April 4, 9:30 PM: An earlier version of this article stated that Trump has established an import levy of 26 percent for South Korea, this is 25 percent.

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