I have many reactions to collapse to a large extent of President Donald Trump in his sheet plan to tariff with the world, but in general, a reaction continues to return to me: if he hires clowns, you must wait a circus. And my fellow citizens, we have hired a group of clowns.
Think about what Trump; His boss Knucklehead, Howard Lutnick (the Secretary of Commerce); His assistant to Chief Knucklehead, Scott Besent (the Secretary of the Treasury); And his deputy director Knucklehead, Peter Navarro (the main commercial advisor), has repeatedly told us during the past week: Trump will not go back in these rates because, he takes their choice, it needs them German of the fentanil of killing our void the ours our future tax cuts, and needs them to press the world to buy more things to buy more things. And he could not import what his rich friends on Wall Street say about his losses in the stock market.
After creating ravages in the markets that are in these firm “principles”, without hesitation, the promotion of many Americans to sell under fear of Wednesday’s investment, announcing a 90 -day break in China.
Message to the world, and the Chinese: “I could not take heat.” If it were a book, it would be called “the art of chillido.”
In smoke
But do not think for a second that everything that is the leg is money. A complete invaluable confidence stack also rose with smoke. In recent weeks, we have told our closest friends in the world, countries that were shoulders with us after September 11, in Iraq and in Afghanistan, that none of them was different from China or Russia. All were going to be tariffed under the same formula-no, the discounts of friends and family allowed.
Do you think that these former close allies of the United States will ever trust a trench with this administration again?
This was the commercial equivalent of the failed output of the Biden Administration of Afghanistan, which was never recovered. But in ATE, Joe Biden took us out of a expensive war of not winning for the United States, in my opinion, is now much better.
Trump only puts us in a non -winning war.
How is that? We have a commercial imbalance with China that must be addressed. Trump is right about that. China now controls a third of global manufacturing and has industrial engines so that everything is every day if it is achieved. That is not good for us, for Europe or for many developing countries. It is not equally good for China, given the fact that by putting so many resources in the export industries, it is ignoring the Mager Social Security Network, it offers its people and even the public medical care system.
Us against the world
But when you have a country as large as China, 1.4 billion people, with talent, infrastructure and savings it has, the only way to negotiate is with the leverage of our side of the table. And the best way to obtain leverage would have a leg so that Trump enlist our allies in the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Brazil, Vietnam, Canada, Mexico, India, Australia and Indonesia on a united front. Become a negotiation around the world versus China.
Then he tells Beijing: we will all gradually raise our rates on their exports in the next two years to press it to change its export economy to a more national oriented. But we will also invite you to build factories and supply chains in our joint companies in the countries of our countries, to transfer your experience in the way that forced us to do for you. We do not want a bifurcated world. It will be less prosperous for everyone and less stable.
But instead of turning it into the entire industrial world against China, Trump made him the United States against the entire industrial world and China.
Now, Beijing knows that Trump not only blinked, but also alienated our allies, so he showed that he can trust his word for a second, that many of them will never be aligned with us against China in the same way. Instead, they can see China as a better and more stable partner in the long term than us.
What a pathetic and shameful performance. Happy day of liberation.
Thomas Friedman is a New York Times columnist.