Cars

Those who profited from globalization are concerned as Trump leads the world away from the old established ways and into the make America great world. The news is predicting a downturn in the world economy as one of the first changes takes place this week. Trump is introducing reciprocal tariffs. This means that if any country charges tariffs on US goods the US will charge an equal tariff on that country’s goods. This shows how dependent the established order is on current tariff practices of discriminating against the US. The US is merely promoting the concept of free and fair trade. The world likes the free part but not the fair part. For many decades Europe has had a 10% tariff on US auto imports while the US has a 2.5% tariff on auto imports from Europe. Trump is about to change that and here is the response from Europe. “I deeply regret the US decision to impose tariffs on European automotive exports,” von der Leyen said in a statement released late Wednesday evening. “Tariffs are taxes — bad for businesses [and] worse for consumers equally in the US and the European Union.” A much better approach would be for Europe to reduce their tariff to match those of the US at 2.5%. When both sides are charging the same, they can take the next step and remove the tariffs. In 2024 8 million cars were imported to the US mostly from Europe and Asia. In contrast 300,000 US cars were exported to Europe. Less than 1% of cars sold in Japan are US imports. This is just cars but almost all other products are similarly treated. That is why the world is upset.