The Tariff War Begins

I sat last night watching the late news off ARD.  The chief topic was the Trump tariff situation, and they had a clip of the EU chief talking of their new tactic.

She'd been in touch with Japan, China, Mexico and Canada.....angling for a forceful show-down with all of them facing up to Trump and making him bend their way.

I sat and pondered upon the tactic.  Rather than discuss the current and existing tariffs that the EU has on US products....they launched into the group-bully gimmick.

So, Trump will pick up the phone and call up China's boss to ask if they are seriously doing that, and if the US needs to put more tariff measures on China?  The China response will be 'no'.....no association with the EU.

Then Trump will pick up the phone and call the Japanese chief to ask the same question, and the response will be the same.

Then Trump will simply dump NAFTA, period....affecting both Mexico and Canada.  With zero document existing....the trade situation is then screwed up and neither can market in the US without doing a new trade agreement.  So they will push the EU away, and try to motivate themselves to clear up the mess.

At this point, the EU will realize that 'circle is broken'.  The group-bully tactic didn't work.  Plan B?  Hmmm.....wasn't there a TTIP deal out there?  What happened to that?  Oh yeah....they screwed this up enough during the fall of 2016, so that it failed miserably.  Perhaps dusting it off and restarting a conversation?  No....their hope is that Trump is dumped by impeachment, or fails to win in 2020.  If neither happens?  Six long damning years with a screwed up tariff mess that they refuse to deal with.

Oh, and all that hype by the ARD analyst over particular companies to be harshly treated?  He wanted to emphasize Harley Davidson.  Well...the last time I looked, they were intent on shutting the factory in the US down, and moving to Thailand.  It'll likely happen by spring of 2019. 

As several economic experts have said....the EU doesn't have an idea on how to deal with Trump or this whole discussion.