BEIJING, February 15th (AMSP/CGTN) – – The U.S. government’s imposition of new tariffs has sparked widespread criticism, with economic professors and business leaders condemning the move as a lose-lose proposition that will stoke inflation and undermine global cooperation.
In an interview with China Global Television Network (CGTN), Armin Steinbach, professor of EU Law and Economics at HEC Paris, said U.S. tariff hikes mark another move by President Donald Trump to disrupt the multilateral trading system, which he believes is now defunct.
“Absolutely, this tariff imposition goes against the multilateral idea. It’s basically another attempt of the U.S., specifically of Trump, to undermine multilateral trade, that’s what he had done already in 2018, when he paralyzed the WTO, paralyzed the dispute settlement procedures of the WTO, which is a very successful, very effective tool of settling trade disputes, recognized by all WTO members. And I did like actually the Chinese reaction to the first announcement of tariffs, which was, ‘we go to Geneva, we launch a panel procedure’, as one should do in a multilateral trading system against the U.S.,” said Steinbach.
“Now, the problem is the multilateral trade system, the WTO system is dead. It has been killed by the United States, by the Trump administration. It has not been fixed by the Biden administration. I fully agree with what has been said. There are only losers to these trade wars,” he added.
Echoing Steinbach’s remarks, Manuel Menendez Ⅲ, founder of the MCM Group Holdings, said Trump’s protectionist measures are self-defeating, given the interconnected nature of the global economy.
“As we all know, isolation never works. China and the U.S., 45 percent of the world’s GDP. But generally speaking, we have to work together. And this idea that we can separate from the world, I think, is not going to work. These type of taxes, of tariffs, do not do anything except pass along costs to the consumer and the importer and so forth. So, it actually drives inflation. There are no winners in a trade war, as you know, there are only losers,” he said.
Trump, who has said many times that tariff is the most beautiful word in the dictionary, has announced sweeping tariffs on U.S. trade partners in less than a month after he took office on Jan 20.
On Feb 1, Trump signed an executive orders to impose a 25 percent additional tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico and a 10 percent additional tariff on all goods imported from China.
On Feb 3, Trump agreed pause tariffs on Mexico and Canada for 30 days after talks with their respective leaders, while the tariffs on China took effect a day later.
On Monday, Trump on Monday signed proclamations to raise tariffs on aluminum from 10 percent to 25 percent and ended duty-free quotas, exemptions and exclusions for steel and aluminum tariffs.
On Thursday, Trump signed a memorandum directing his administration to determine “the equivalent of a reciprocal tariff with respect to each foreign trading partner.”
Based on the reciprocal tariff policy, his administration has planned to impose tariffs on Canada and France over their digital services taxes on U.S. technology giants.
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