Trump's big, not so beautiful, tariff wall

POLITICAL FUTURES - Globalization helped make the United States the most prosperous nation in history.

- IAN BREMMER

But lots of Americans didn't feel that way, and accordingly voted to "liberate" themselves from it last November. Donald Trump is now delivering for them — and the consequences will reverberate across the globe.

"Now it is our turn to prosper," President Trump proclaimed on April 2 in the Rose Garden as he announced sweeping "reciprocal" tariffs ranging from 10 percent to 50 percent on almost every US trading partner (plus a few uninhabited territories). China, labeled one of the "worst offenders," was hit with a 34 percent tariff on top of the 20 percent duties Trump had already levied in February and March, bringing its base rate to 54 percent. Japan, the European Union and South Korea, to name a few of the "cheaters" and "scavengers" who Trump said had "looted," "raped," "plundered" and "pillaged" America, saw 25 percent, 20 percent and 15 percent tariffs imposed, respectively. Even countries with goods surpluses with the United States were slapped with a 10 percent across-the-board levy.

"Liberation Day," as Trump called it, heralded not the end of US-led globalization, which had been adrift for many years already, but America's definitive turn against globalization. Virtually overnight, the effective tariff rate on US imports will rise to over 22 percent, going from one of the world's lowest to by far the highest of any major economy. This is a level not seen since the turn of the previous century — higher even than the infamous 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariffs, widely credited with starting a global trade war and deepening the Great Depression.