After spending a few weeks hitting Canada and Mexico, Donald Trump directed his attention on Wednesday to a completely new goal: the rest of the planet Earth.
The president of the United States extended his commercial war by imposing the widest set of rates on generations, effectively restoring the post -war commercial system.
The only good news for Canada, as it is, is that when Trump quickly and furiously swing with new tariffs, no new packages were needed.
The good news ends there.
The bad news is that the previously announced tariffs will remain in place: potentially Devastating automatic tariffs That kick on Thursday, steel and aluminum tariffs of 25 percent, 10 percent in energy and potassa, and 25 percent in other goods.
For Trump, this was a personal moment of Kodak.
After showing a table that lists the various tariff percentages, he will accuse some countries (Canada and Mexico were not in the table, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, said there would be a ‘minimum’ line of 10 percent on the goods of foreign countries.
Standing in the White House grass, he referred to this as the culmination of an old dream, given his decades as a protectionist dyed in wool.
“I’ve been talking about that for 40 years,” Trump said.
“If you look at my old speeches when I was young, very handsome, in my old speeches … I would be talking about how we were scammed by these countries.”
He added: “It is a great honor to finally do this.”
And for “this” he referred to imposing rates ranging from 10 percent to 50 percent of 50 percent in some countries, impacting not only markets, but potentially realize the geopolitical map of the planet, with the United States writing this hemisphere.
Asia is out, Latin America in
We will see what countries, if any, negotiate a better deal. But the initial pattern is clear: Trump has turned the tables in Asia.
There, where the United States had been cultivating allies against China, commercial partners now face tariffs of 46 percent (Vietnam), 49 percent (Cambodia), 24 percent (Japan), 32 percent (Taiwan), 26 percent (India) and 37 percent (Bangladesh). China also obtained a 34 percent rate.
Anyone who sells clothes or electronics in the US. Uu. Now it has some incentive to change production to Latin America, where tariffs are mainly 10 percent.
“I think there are great geopolitical implications,” said Chad Bown, a trade expert at the Peterson Institute in Washington and former chief economist of the Department of State of Biden.
But added an important warning.
There is so much uncertainty about how long these rates will last, and it has been redesigning the supply chains for some time, so it is not clear that anyone can make long -term investment assumptions based on Wednesday’s numbers.
In addition, the elements of the plan appeared hurried. The Trump list included several non -judgments, such as the Heard and McDonald Islands of Heard and McDonald, an arid Antarctic Archipier belonging to Australia that now faces a 10 percent rate.
That said, the waves of uncertainty are certainly undulating by Canada. And, within Canada, no place runs the risk of being more difficult than the automatic country.
Canada faces pain
A tangas of rates will enter into force in the largest manufactured product in Canada: it is up to 25 percent in completely assembled vehicles and some pieces, while other pieces do not face any.
An automatic worker in southern Ontario says that his colleagues are afraid to make great purchases now, fearing dismissals.
“It’s going to be an infernal time,” Jayson Mercier told CBC News. “Here we are again, similar to [the economic crisis of] 2008 – Where we don’t know if we are going to have a job. “
A Canadian-American commercial consultant says that Canada was better than most countries in Wednesday’s announcement. But that is a cold comfort for certain sectors, he added.
“The cars will be greatly shocking for Canada,” said Eric Miller, head of Rideau Potomac consulting born in Canada in Washington.
“That is a lot of pain for Canada. And you will see a lot of restructuring and realignment in the automotive sector of North America.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney, speaking from Parliament Hill on Wednesday, says that Canada will act with “purpose and strength” to fight the new US tariffs. President Donald Trump slapped new rates of 25 percent to foreign manufacturing cars, but Canada was saved from 10 percent reference rates applied to many other countries.
An industry player put him even more bluntly in a publication on social networks. He predicted a dead point of the industry in a matter of days, and not only in Canada.
“The. Auto. Rate. Package. Will. Closed. Down. The Sector. Auto. In. Ee. UU.
“Do not distract yourself. 25% of tariffs are 4 times 6/7% of the profit margins of all companies. Mathematics, no art.”
Certain goods negotiated under the rules of the Canada-Mexico Agreement do not face tariffs, under exemptions Trump announced weeks ago.
Estimates vary from how many goods will face tasks, but it seems that most Canada’s exports to the US now face rates.
“I’m not sure anyone knows [the exact percentage] At the moment, “said Bown.
In Washington, the rates opponents rained at Trump’s great moment.
When he began to speak, the American Senate led by the Republicans began hours of debate about a symbolic vote to repudiate their tariffs in Canada.
Some members of Trump’s own party voted with the Democrats in an attempt to cancel the first Lot of Tariffs in Canada. It is a convicted effort, although it approved the Senate, 51-48. The camera does not plan to take it, and Trump would veto him anyway.
But he intended to deliver a political black eye to Trump the day he announced his tariffs, and those in Canada were especially unpopular, according to the surveys.
The first speaker was Rand Paul, the Kentucky senator who was one of the few Republicans who supported the measure.
He raised a strip of Trump’s actions, calling them “crazy.”
Paul ridiculed Trump’s idea that Canada represents a threat of national security due to fentanyl trade. He said that more fentanyl comes from the USA. That in the other way, called to Canada a valuable commercial partner and said that Trump will increase the costs for the Americans.
In addition, the libertarian inclination legislator criticized the idea in principle.
He said there is a tradition of almost a millennium, returning to the Magna Carta, through the American revolution, that it should be a legislature to approve a new tax, not just a leader.
That is exactly what opponents call Trump’s plan: the greatest increase in sudden taxes in American history.
“Taxes without representation are tyranny,” Paul said. “Conservatives used to understand that tariffs are taxes on the American people.”
He added: “What happened? Do we suddenly give up all the things we used to believe?”
Lately, for Republicans, there is no authority higher than Trump’s. They could stop this if they wanted, through Congress.
He has a constitutional role in international trade, but, throughout the decades, Congress wrote several laws that gave the President a new power to impose tariffs declaring an emergency.
No one has used that power, in this way. Not until now. Now Trump is taking advantage of that power in unprecedented ways.
