London – President Donald Trump has overturned the global economy by slapping tariffs on the world, including its two largest exporters: China and the European Union. One has been delayed while the other seems to be breathing.
While Beijing has promised “fighting until the end” of an increasingly fierce commercial war, the European Union has adopted an apparently more methodical approach, just voting on Wednesday for an answer to import taxes “unjustified and harmful” about steel and aluminum that Trump announced in February.
While critics denounce the lack of agility of the EU as the glacial response of a heavy bureaucracy, and perhaps even an inconvenience of democracy itself, supporters defend it as a long term.
The un specified “countermeasures” announced on Wednesday enter into force on April 15. But the 27 member states of the block are still deliberating how to react to the world’s world rates that have collapsed the prices of the shares during the past week, saying that they favor negotiation on remuneration.
China’s policies, meanwhile, are largely dictated by a man, President Xi Jinping, who has aggressively counteracted. Earlier on Wednesday, Beijing increased retaliation rates over all US assets to 84%, promising “fighting until the end” in this mutually painful conflict.
“There is no ‘correct’ response to Trump’s tariffs,” said Praness Narayanan, a researcher at the Public Policy Research Institute, a group of experts in London. “Both China and the EU have a different set of objectives, different geopolitical relationships with the United States and different decision -making processes.”
Trump describes both Beijing and Brussels and competitors, a deviation from previous presidents that considered Europeans as commercial partners, cultural and military allies and friends. It has repeatedly and falsely exaggerated the commercial deficits of both, warning that reprisals will meet even more extreme measures.
Some of the Trump team insist that this is a policy, instead of a negotiation tactic; The president himself has suggested otherwise.
“These countries are calling us, kissing my butt,” Trump said Tuesday at a dinner at Washington.
He has asked China to do the same, writing in a social publication of the truth on Tuesday that “we are waiting for his call. It will happen!”
But there is little evidence that China plans to flash first.
Last week, it coincided with the new 34% Trump rate, and then stood face to face Wednesday with the 50% increase, the president said he would impose if China did not withdraw his first retaliation.
The Chinese Finance Ministry said Trump’s “escalation” was a “serious violation of China’s legitimate rights and interests, serious damage to the rules -based multilateral trade system and a serious impact on the stability of the global economic order.”
China is “curling during a long period of commercial tensions in the hope that they can survive next to the United States,” said Rick Waters, a former diplomat of the State Department who is now the director of Carnegie China based in Singapore.
“The Chinese are proud. They have a humiliation history at the hands of foreign powers,” he said. “And I think that type of tactics play in their defensive instincts.”
Unlike the XI rule, the 27 EU member states must agree on commercial policy through a two -thirds majority.
That is not easy now that Europe is full of right -wing populists who have developed ties with Trump’s White House.
One of them is the Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who now has to balance her admiration for Trump with the pain that her tariffs threaten for her country. She has advocated the de -escalation to “prevent a commercial war” before her visit to Washington next week.
“It’s hard to coat a consensus,” said Paola Subacchi, professor of Economics at the University of Bologna. “But all these opinions are under the same umbrellas of self -interest: each country wants to get the best for themselves.”
Subacchi is one of those who believe that the EU consensus -based approach can be a fortress. With most of the eyes in Beijing, whose rates are much higher than those of Europe, he has time to calibrate his response.
Waiting for a rhythm means that “inflation will begin to affect US consumers, and the reality of Trump’s policies will begin to materialize,” said Elvire Fabry, principal researcher at Jacques Delors Institute, a group of experts partially financed by the EU and the French government. “I think Europe could be in a better position to take advantage and retaliate.”
Despite all their differences, the EU and China are now working together against Trump’s tariffs. The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, spoke on Tuesday with the second in command of XI, Prime Minister Li Qiang. Some experts say this should alarm Trump.
“The fact that the administration left almost 70 countries at the same time worries that China’s position has really improved,” Waters said. “Because now you have Europe and China speaking among them.”
Europe has the so-called “Bazuca” in its arsenal, officially the anti-coercion instrument, which is a framework that allows it to impose a variety of punishments in response to “economic coercion.”
“The game that is playing in the United States, based on spurious analysis, data and economic understanding, is very dangerous,” said Subacchi.
“Whatever Trump and his advisors think, the United States receives a large number of capital tickets because foreign investors trust the dollar and trust the United States Treasury bonds,” he added. “As a result of this ‘day of liberation’, all this trust and trust are being melted.”
