by Vincenzo Petrone (*)
ROMA (ITALPRESS) – The Supreme Court decision, last Friday, has not only annulled the executive measures with which President Trump has rolled for almost a year the right to impose tariffs on imports of products from abroad without being authorized by Congress. The decision also opened a season of absolute uncertainty for Trump’s unconstitutional claims to govern America’s international trade alone. There is hope that the credibility of the American Treasury as a haven of international capital will not come into play. The rabid and discouraged press conference of the president, Friday evening, his intentions of revenge and his incredible insults to the supreme judges who, 6 vs. 3, have rejected his fees, are actually served to prove that now the president does not know well what to do. And as often happens to him, in doubt he does the wrong thing. In fact, the Court, in its judgment, had left him open an emergency exit, stating that “some” of the tariffs adopted were unconstitutional as they had not been approved by the Congress.
Instead of taking the life donut and eliminating only those declared unconstitutional, replacing them with others, Trump immediately announced that, in substitution of the duties in force, everyone imposed a new duty erga omnes of 10 percent. And only an hour after this universal duty rose to 15 percent. The president has thus slipped into a blind alley that will heavily damage the Republican Party in mid-term elections in November for Congress. The new tariff of 15 per cent will only remain in force for 150 days, based on Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, the legislation in force for this matter. And that means that between June and July, already in the full political campaign for the November elections, the Republican Senators should confirm in the Congress the measures that will become then even less popular than they are today, simply because in the meantime they will not have at all reduced the American trade deficit to the rest of the world, including Italy, and much less they will have substantially reduced the economic difficulties of the middle-low classes. And the more than 150 billion that customs have collected through customs duties could have to be returned to American importers that those tariffs had to pay; it is calculated to the extent of 70 percent of their nominal value.
In the message on the “State of the Union”, tomorrow the president will probably announce that he wants to reiterate his line. But in reality it cannot do otherwise for two main reasons. The first is that he seriously believes in the saving power of duties as a tool to make America big again, reindustrialize it and reduce the gigantic stock of debt, increasingly difficult to refinance if he really wants to grant tax reliefs promised to investors and financiers with the Big Beautiful Bill. Almost all economic manuals, including Fordham University where he studied, say otherwise. But this doesn’t matter to him, considering that his businessman instinct is infallible, even if as a realtor declared bankruptcy six times. The less Trump recognizes the historical precedent, all American, that in the matter of the effects of the duties on the economy he made school all over the world, namely the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act that President Hoover, in June 1930, had approved to drastically increase the duties on 20,000 products. The idea was to protect the national industry and create jobs in America, just what Trump is looking for today. Hoover’s duties were exactly the opposite result: they aggravated the Great Depression for the United States and exported it to Europe. In 1934, Congress abolished those duties.
The second important reason why Trump will not announce a step back tomorrow is that the Supreme Court decision demolishes the fundamental pillar on which Trump was building his own self-improved design of his powers as head of executive, at the expense of Congress and judges. Trump will do everything possible, the impossible and perhaps even the illicit to realize this design. And in his State of the Union Address will emerge all the anger that has already shown towards the Supreme Court, towards some district judges and to the Republican senators, only three so far, who have not completely bent to his will and have criticized him openly. He will threaten them not to sponsor them and lose the seat to all those who claim to even nurture the slightest disagreement with the President’s policies and behaviors.
The great stone convoys tomorrow in Congress will be the European countries and Canada on one side, China on the other. The European Parliament has already suspended the discussion on the ratification of the Leonino agreement that the European Union had to accept in spring. And Xi Jinping in April will receive a much weaker and anxious Trump in Beijing to show that in international politics its aggressiveness leads dividends. It is unlikely that it will succeed in this acrobacy and it will be necessary that even in Italy a reflection on this.
(*) Ambassador a.r.
– Photo IPA Agency –
(ITALPRESS).
