Donald Trump called it “Liberation Day”. Last week, with characteristic theatricality, the United States president unleashed a barrage of tariffs on America’s trading partners: 10 per cent on most imports, 34 per cent on Chinese goods and 20 per cent on products from the European Union. The message was vintage Trump: “America first”, rules be damned.
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But for all the patriotic bravado, this move was not liberation but escalation. It also presents Europe with a historic opportunity, not just to defend itself from economic aggression but to reshape the global trading order now that Trump’s America has abdicated its traditional role as steward.
In the pantheon of presidential spectacles, few moments encapsulate the unseriousness of Trump’s America as vividly as his “Liberation Day” performance. Standing in the Rose Garden, the president brandished a chart purportedly detailing the tariffs other nations impose on the US, juxtaposed against his administration’s retaliatory measures.
The tariffs were concocted through a flawed formula that equated trade deficits with tariff rates, a methodology no reputable economist would endorse. This wasn’t just economic illiteracy but the hallmark of a presidency preferring showmanship to strategy. In such hands, the United States forfeits its claim to global leadership as leadership demands a grasp of reality, not a penchant for illusion.
Trump’s trade philosophy is rooted in a 19th-century world view: zero-sum, mercantilist and proudly transactional. Gone is the post-war consensus of multilateralism and shared prosperity. In its place stands a crude leverage game. The US, he believes, is the indispensable market and everyone else should pay for the privilege of access.
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But as the saying reminds us, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. Trump’s latest assault on trade partners and allies demands not a bowed head but a stiffened spine. It isn’t the moment for genuflection but the hour to seize the mantle of global leadership, a role Europe must now claim with both hands.