Trump is playing dangerous games with the US economy

Donald Trump says that Americans have been “plundered”, raped” and scavenged” by “foreign cheaters” for decades. Such bizarre, violent language. So unpresidential. And plain wrong.

- SEAN O'GRADY

Some might wonder how the US – were his assertions correct – could have come to be the largest and most successful economy in the history of the world. Its citizens have never been richer. But this may not be the case for much longer.

Trump keeps telling folk that foreign countries pay tariffs. They don’t. American shoppers will. Will American shoppers see their Vietnamese-made Apple iPhones in Walmart go up by 46 per cent? Will people in those hard-pressed towns in the rust belt be made to pay more for a home made with Canadian timber?

The answer is “yes”.

Tariffs are a sales tax by another name, and a highly regressive one – there is no allowance made for people’s ability, or otherwise, to pay. Prices in America will go up, inequality will grow, and no one will be given back their “American dream”, as the president claims they will.

As stock markets plummet in the aftermath of Trump’s announcement, opinion polls suggest that Americans fear the consequences. They are right to do so. Trump, a man who once owned casinos, has thrown the dice on the greatest economic gamble since the Second World War.

The game-show-style presentation, as if it were a TV bingo show, should have fooled no one. The calculations of tariffs, nontariff barriers and currency manipulations are entirely notional, to put it mildly. Trump knew what he wanted to do – like a gangster favouring his cronies and whacking his supposed enemies – and worked the percentage back from there. JD Vance got a presidential shout-out – “You are getting more confident!” – which carried a hint of menace.

None of it is rational. Why, he even hit the penguins in the Falklands with a 41 per cent tariff.