It was not a bluff, the prices are there – and it is only the opening salvo of the oval office.
The world trading system has not been here before. A shift to a wider trade conflict is very on the maps, because President Trump first prepares similar prices against Europe, then at a universally lower level.
But what matters as much as the actions that the United States undertakes is how the rest of the world reacts.
This, in turn, requires a judgment on what the president really tries to achieve.
Trump regularly changes his justification for prices – either to force diplomatic change, to face commercial imbalances, or to increase significant income.
These policy objectives cannot all be achieved simultaneously.
For example, by learning of the first term of Trump’s first term “China Deal”, Western diplomats collapsed to find lists of American products which they could buy more, in order to give the White House some victories.
Europe could say that it increases its purchases of American expeditions of liquefied natural gas, or weapons, or specialized magnets for wind farms.
It does not matter that these trends are already by train, as long as the American president can be authorized to write a “victory”.
But is the change in trade deficit really the goal here?
Officially, the justification for Trump’s decision is the punishment for the synthetic fentanyl opioid trade, but this is widely considered as a legal pretext for an “emergency” action which would normally require a decision of the congress.
Canada reported that it would take a robust approach to Trump, better articulated by the competitor as the next Prime Minister of the country, Mark Carney.
“We are going to retaliate … dollar for a dollar,” he told the BBC, ridiculing the justification of fentanyl and saying that Canada “would resist a tyrant”.
This is significant, whether or not Carney succeeds Justin Trudeau and ends up chairing the G7, which is the group of the seven largest “advanced” economies in the world.
As a former governor of the Bank of England, Carney witnessed Trump on the world scene during the G20 and G7 meetings in first hand and clearly concluded that the American leader only respects the force.
He had a coded warning for any nation seeking to remain silent and not to attract the president’s attention: “good luck”.
During the recent conversations that I had with European commercial negotiators, they underlined cooperation and partnership, as well as agreements with the United States. When asked, they avoided directly criticizing the extraordinary suggestion to use prices against NATO Ally Denmark on the fate of Greenland.
The real question here is whether the rest of the world, even tacitly, coordinates reprisal prices on, for example, the high -level political supporters of President Trump, like Elon Musk, who is a typical characteristic of smaller disputes .
Tesla, the manufacturer of electric vehicles led by Musk, warned last week on the impact of the tariffs of Tit-For-Tat.
All this would aim to make rival courts around the oval office and interest in the congress, to assert their concerns about the impact on world exports of American factories.
It is before the impact on American interior prices.
This could also occur, more and more circuit, thanks to the application of a carbon trade tax provided in various jurisdictions.
The way this takes place exactly depends on the perception of the power of the United States.
Some nations may conclude that these days, there are other options in the world.
Price threats being sprayed in several directions every day, the world is in unexplored territory.
