Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was, I guess, trying to be reassuring when he said, about Trump’s tariff decision, “We're not trying to blow up the world. There's no intention of that,"www.cnbc.com/…
That would be a lot more reassuring, however, if there weren’t repeated examples in history of where actions that weren’t INTENDED to cause cataclysms nevertheless did so. I’ve recently been doing a lot of reading about the events that led to World War I. I think it’s completely safe to say that absolutely NOBODY actually INTENDED to produce the ghastly carnage that World War I involved. But people kept making decisions that led inexorably to that result.
I think it’s also safe to say that nobody actually INTENDED to produce a worldwide Great Depression in the 1930’s. But protectionist decisions after what might have been a relatively short-term financial crisis in 1929 quickly spiraled into the worst world-wide economic downturn in modern history.
These tariffs will, absolutely predictably, damage every industry in the United States that uses substantial amounts of steel or aluminum. They will also, equally predictably, prompt retaliatory tariffs against American products. And Trump has already promised that if the EU imposes retaliatory tariffs, he will retaliate by increasing the tariffs imposed upon automobiles manufactured in the EU. There is no doubt that they will retaliate by raising the tariffs on additional U.S. products. And so it goes, in a spiral into an all-out trade war.
So while I guess we should be thankful that at least they’re not TRYING to blow up the entire world economic system, I’m not too relieved by that fact. If the result is the same, it doesn’t really matter whether it’s the result that they INTENDED, or one that they produced through mere stupidity.