The Catalan researcher that Trump quotes to justify his tariffs: “What he is doing is an animated, will cause a recession” | Economy | EUROtoday

That the United States authorities cite you, even whether it is to declare the industrial warfare on the entire world, it may give as much as you. This is what occurred final week to the researcher Pau S. Pujolas, who noticed that the article he had signed alongside along with his colleague Jack Rossbach was among the many 5 bibliographic references used to justify the torticulture calculation of the tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump. But quickly adrenaline gave method to one thing just like frustration. While it’s true that the Pujolas and Rossbach article concludes that in a industrial warfare between two nations the Nation with industrial deficit has these of profitable, the mannequin utilized by the researchers can’t justify Trump’s measures. “Between my study and what the White House is doing is a very large stretch. It is an animated, they are causing a recession,” says the economist by means of videoconference.

He has been giving many extra explanations about his article than these he might by no means foresee. Pujolas, born in Solsona (Lleida) and a doctorate on the Autonomous University of Barcelona in 2013, works as an related professor on the University of McMaster, in Canada. In 2024 he signed with Rossbach an article entitled “Commercial Deficits with Commercial Wars”, which was revealed within the Preprinted model. That is, the supervision of the required friends has not but handed to be revealed definitively in a scientific journal. But this didn’t care in regards to the Trump administration, which included the article in references to justify the calculation of tariffs. This Monday, the White House made public essentially the most in depth reflections, made on the Hudson Institute by Steve Miran, president of the Trump Economic Advisors Council. And in them he quote the article of the researchers of the Canadian University.

“Most recent economic analysis allow the possibility of persistent commercial deficits that resist an automatic rebalancing, which is more consistent with reality in the United States,” they stated by citing the article. “They show that imposing tariffs on exporting countries, the United States can improve economic results, increase income and impose enormous losses for the tariff nation, even with total reprisals,” he provides.

“This is exactly what my article says,” Pujolas explains. But he provides: “They look and those of the Council of Economic Advisors are very intelligent, but I know that what the White House is doing is not necessarily what they say. The formula and the tables with which Trump came out as if it were Moses have nothing to do with my article or with the articles that were cited.”

The article is an financial evaluation of who would win in a industrial warfare between the United States and China. Take as reference the 2014 information – in order that they don’t seem to be contaminated with the industrial wars that started within the first Trump administration – and formulates a mannequin with the calculations of a supercomputer. “When a government puts tariffs it is because it is the most optimal: it manages to keep money that companies stayed before. If the tariff is small, this money that collects is greater than the damage it does to its economy. But the other also decides to put tariffs because it is also the most optimal. And at the end of the day, the two are poorer. This is what has always occurred by valid,” explains Pujolas.

“But what occurs when there’s a industrial deficit between the 2, one thing that may occur for a thousand causes? Does this variation the mind-set about industrial wars? What we noticed is that if the industrial deficit is massive sufficient, it’s a good suggestion to place a tariff,” he says. The reason is that they argue is that if the United States buys more products from China than those who sell, at the end of the climb – scaled by the Superordinate – who will be more harmed is the one that has the most products to sell, that is, China. “We did a very complete model and asked if the United States would benefit from putting an optimal tariff on China, and told us that yes. But those that put in 2018 were not optimal, and therefore already lost that commercial war. And if you put in our model the animal tariff deficit, it makes no sense. ”

In the model used by researchers did not put other variables such as debt or fiscal deficit, or the role of the dollar, elements that also have a lot of peso in how the US economy is behaving in the present commercial war. Pujolas and Rossbach only analyzed the commercial deficit. “And we proposed tariffs of 10% or 15%, not those that are placing. And our article doesn’t say that you’re an erratic chief who needs Greenland or needs to make Canada the state quantity 51. All this additionally creates confusion,” the researcher ironizes.