The rates Donald Trump has now imposed all the exports of steel and aluminum to the United States are just the beginning of an unpredictable trade war.
The one that was triggered by Trump now at night is not exactly new. The first time he occupied the White House, he had done similar thing – with very disputed results.
Commercial wars almost never have a winner, but many losers. The American consumer will probably be one of them, obliged to pay higher prices to support an industrial field that has lost competition capacity there.
Brazil is also one of the losers. We are the second largest supplier of this type of raw material for the United States, who buy almost half of our exports in this segment.
Trump’s view of protectionism is primitive and illusory, but this is not even the main aspect of what is happening. In the last eight years, the international situation has changed a lot, and what today Trump is doing is subordinate commercial policy to the geopolitical game.
In other words, the damage to others he tries to inflict with the imposition of tariffs is not limited to trying brutally to balance trade balance sheets.
In such a situation, the old saying is even more: everyone knows how wars start, but you never know exactly how they end.
Trump talks so much about common sense, but forgets one of the most significant: superpowers are superpowens because they are able to conduct large and strong alliances. Trump wants to do the opposite.
