US credibility undermined by trade war

Everything will change very fast and, this time, as proof of the now irreversible interconnectedness of the world, it will change all over the globe. The reason lies in the fact that Donald Trump's aggressions against those who have been long-term allies of the US will encourage nations to form blocs and establish or strengthen trade networks that will increasingly isolate the US in the global arena.

The baffling 'trade tariffs' affair is but a feverish symptom of a disease in the cultural system of world capitalism that will be painful and devastating. The tariffs indicated by the president are the result of a simple division of a country's trade surplus with the US by its total exports. And China has responded in kind, accepting the challenge by raising counter-tariffs of equal magnitude... And here we come to the decisive point: a trade war begins that is based on a return to classic North American imperialism. The method is surprising and does not take into account the amount of business services that powerfully affect total factory productivity, and that are in favour of the US. Ultimately, this statistical approach negates the very notion of comparative advantage, which underlies the very liberalist theories that are supposed to be the foundation of the dominant mainstream.

Elementary Watson... but no one knows or says that any more.

The tariff trade war is certainly a tool with which the US believes it can reverse the now irresistible trend of North American decline. But all this only undermines the credibility of the US. After all, they are the only guarantors of the network of alliances that have sustained both order and disorder. The other powers, from Tokyo to Beijing to Riyadh to New Delhi and, of course, also in Brussels and Strasbourg, where the EU's heavenly bureaucracy lives and operates, follow the erratic US moves with apprehension - and it would not be the first time in world history. They, after all, accelerate multipolar trends against the US, according to that counterintuitive relationship in which lies the great secret and the most fascinating aspect of the study of international relations. Just think of the 'Nixon Shock' of 1971: the unilateral denunciation of dollar convertibility was accompanied by the imposition of the admittedly temporary, but still generalised 10% tariffs that were intended to induce all world powers and states to a rapid monetary accommodation favourable to the US. But that very tailspin, that forcing, gave impetus and actually provoked the process that would later lead Europe to adopt the euro, first with the monetary snake, then with the EMU. After all, Reagan's rearmament in the 1980s was also a sort of unspecified response to a multipolar dynamic.

This was to be followed in 2003, after the Twin Towers, with George W. Bush's war 'by choice': the design was to control and hold on to the fossil energy artery, so as to prevent the European unification process from again going against the US. But all this led to unexpected results, starting years later with the disastrous retreat from Iraq, which triggered a crisis that still lasts today. Withdrawal of which we saw a new representation recently in Afghanistan, to the point of favouring China's influence in the Persian Gulf and Africa in irreversible forms. All this is nothing but the fruit of the relative decline of the US: it weighs in different forms and ways on the various areas and powers of world power, with the crisis of the world order manifesting itself in changing and very different forms across the planet. And after all, the EU is on the move, you can't say no: Ursula von der Leyen wields the military weapon and summons the EU to Davos. And the fantastic António Costa raises the flag for Europe as 'the centre of attraction for the 'emerging' powers as well as Great Britain and Japan'. And he proclaims the EU 'open for business' and 'ready to dialogue with China and India...'.