Donald Trump obsessive about commerce deficits: within the roots of evil | EUROtoday

On Apr 11, 2025

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“Itired of seeing other countries ripping the United States. They make fun of us behind our backs, they laugh at our stupidity. You would think that this tirade comes from the speech of the American president of April 2, when he announced his customs tariffs during a day that he had baptized “Liberation Day”. But no, Donald Trump pronounced these words almost 40 years ago, September 2, 1987. Trade deficits, which he sees as a “loss” in a big zero -sum game where a country can only be a winner or losing, have always been his obsession.

That day, Donald Trump was the guest of Larry King’s talk show on CNN. The same morning, he offered himself a full page of advertising in several American daily newspapers, including the New York Timesfor nearly $ 100,000 (nearly $ 300,000 today).

Read too Customs costs: Trump tells a fantasized story of the United StatesIn this “open letter”, he explains “why America should cease paying to defend nations that may defend itself”, a refrain he has repeated since 2016 for NATO. “The hour has come,” continues Trump, “to place an finish to our monumental deficits by charging Japan and others who can afford it. Our world safety is price tons of of billions of {dollars} for these nations. ”

Already, political ambitions

On the set of Larry King, Donald Trump speaks of protection, but additionally of commerce: “I believe that it is important to have free trade, but there is no free trade currently,” he stated, talking of the boundaries behind which Japan protects its economic system.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8WJC7VHCTS

The King of Real Estate continues: “We should have a surplus, not a deficit”, with out our realizing if he’s speaking in regards to the American federal price range or a commerce steadiness, however he insists within the course of: “The kind of amounts of which I speak, you can call it a tax, or what you want, these countries owe us billions of dollars, and we can then help the poor and the unarmed.

Despite this media offensive and what looks greatly like a political platform, Trump assures him to King: “I do not need to” be president. However, he is already thinking of the White House. In his book Power: The 50 Truthsthe sounder Doug Schoen claims to have been hired by Trump in 1987 to test his chances. Verdict: a popularity between “15 and 20 %”, a lack of national notoriety and the chances of victory deemed, at that time, “impossible”. Donald Trump, who has just changed affiliation to work among the Republicans, renounces, and it is George Bush Father who was elected in 1988.

Read too “No must search for: there isn’t any financial logic at Trump”Two months later, Donald Trump published the founding book of his mythology, The Art of the Dealwritten, as the Timein full by journalist Tony Schwartz based on two years of interviews and conversations with the Tycoon of Manhattan. “The biggest affect on me, rising up, was my father, Fred Trump,” said his son. An authoritarian and demanding father who instills in him this principle, according to several biographers: in life, there are two types of people, the “Killers”, and the “losers”. And Donald Trump does not want to be a loser in business as in world trade.

The Chinese enemy

During the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump charges Jared Kushner to prepare cards on China. Variety tells that his son -in -law then turns to Amazon, and discovers a book with a devastating title: Death by China (Death by China) of Peter Navarro. A graduate of Harvard, he is seen by his peers as a “fringent” economist (at the margin), with protectionist and mercantile views of another age. In his book, he quotes an expert, Ron Vara, with anti-Chinese positions, whom he will admit that he had invented by creating an anagram from his name.

When he accesses the presidency, Donald Trump makes Navarro one of his economic advisers and chooses as a representative in trade Robert Lighthizer, who has negotiated many treaties under Ronald Reagan. Lighthizer sees free trade as an unseen promise, notably in the face of “unfair” practices of China which are by train, according to him, “slowly bleeding [l’Amérique] to loss of life ”. Lighthizer and Navarro play a central function within the commerce warfare that Donald Trump declared to China in 2018.

Read too Customs duties: “Trump has a completely anachronistic vision of trade”
To uncover

The kangaroo of the day

Answer

For his second time period, Donald Trump retains Peter Navarro as an advisor. Robert Lighthizer hoped to inherit the Treasury or change into a commerce secretary, however the American president prefers Scott Bessent, an insider of Wall Street, and Howard Lutnick, former boss of the Investment Bank Cantor Fitzgerald, devastated by September 11. Robert Lighthizer doesn’t be a part of the Trump administration, however there are two of his disciples, Jamieson Greer and Kevin Hassett, in addition to the agent of the financial chaos Stephen Miran.

The White House Economic Cell, which Trump has conceived as a “team of rivals”, is reduce in two: on the one hand the supporters of a tough line-Navarro in mind-convinced that customs tariffs will relaunch the industrialization of America and that the shock of “treatment” should be cashed; On the opposite, the clan led by the Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who sees the specter of a commerce warfare as a strain device to renegotiate higher agreements. Donald Trump appears to have first listened to the primary – and his intimate conviction – earlier than backing machine towards the Wall Street dive and panic on the bond market. But tariff climbing with China continues, and Europe might pay the worth.

https://www.lepoint.fr/monde/donald-trump-obsede-par-les-deficits-commerciaux-aux-racines-du-mal-11-04-2025-2587059_24.php