Today, I resume my follow up of the tariff war waged by President Trump against all countries in the world. The outcome has been a retaliatory war that saw reciprocal tariffs imposed by these countries on American goods. Yet President Trump persists in his belligerence as if in a bidding game, raising the tariffs on China from 60 to 104 per cent; China responded by raising tariffs on imported American products from 34 to 84 per cent. As the devastating trade war rages on, it is set to destroy the basics that bound countries of the world for some 80 years since the end of WWII, with no glimmer of hope in sight for a rational end. Adding insult to injury, President Trump called the countries on which he imposed his tariffs to the negotiation table, on condition that they come kneeling, submissive, and begging for mercy so he may forgive them and reconsider his tariffs. But as the US President indulges in his fantasies, other countries such as the powerful economic blocs in Europe and Southeast Asia mobilise their efforts to explore ways to build alliances and bridges among themselves, instead of being tied to the US which, thanks to Trump’s reckless policies, has become an ally that can no longer be trusted.
Not surprisingly, American political and economic analysts are exposing the extent to which Trump’s decisions have usurped powers he does not possess on the constitutional and economic fronts, to say nothing of their violation and distortion of established economic norms. In this regard, I today introduce to my readers excerpts of an interview with renowned economist and Columbia University Professor Jeffrey Sachs, titled “Disaster of the tariffs” on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s podcast Judging Freedom on 3 April 2025.
Judge Napolitano: You and I communicated with each other in a fit of anger and fury over the President’s misunderstanding of Economics 101… We’re going to talk about the President’s executive order which hinges on the fact that in his view we are facing an emergency because it is based on the international emergency economic Powers Act of 1977 signed into law by President Jimmy Carter. That act defines an emergency, and from the definition of an emergency comes the President’s powers to impose a tariff… Now President Trump originally said the emergency was the introduction of this which started in 1934. So how can this be an unusual or extraordinary threat if it’s been going on for 91 years?
Professor Sachs: “Trump has created something you might call an emergency, but it’s basically a phenomenal blunder. Now why did he use the word emergency? Because that’s the only way he can do this himself; a tariff is a tax, a tax is the responsibility of the US Congress. Indeed, the proposal to introduce or change a tax must originate in the House of Representatives, so Trump’s use of the phrase emergency is a gimmick that allows him single-handedly to wreck the international trading system… No there was no emergency yesterday or today that remotely justifies handing such extraordinary power to one person.”
Do we have a trade deficit caused by other countries ripping us off, and now we’re going to get them back? Is that a fair reading of what he wrote or what he signed in his executive order?
“The claim is again fatuous; it’s a complete misunderstanding. A trade deficit means you’re buying more from abroad than you are selling abroad; it doesn’t mean anybody is ripping you off, it means you’re spending more than you’ve earned and maybe there’s a justification for doing that; maybe you’re spending too much compared to your income… We run huge budget deficits so our government’s like a giant credit card for the American people; it borrows massively trillions of dollars and that means that it’s putting out lots of purchasing power more than it’s taking in… The result is that they spend more than America produces each year, that’s the gap between how much we spend and how much we produce, it is exactly equal to our trade deficit… So what he’s ranting and raving about, the trade deficit, is caused by the government over which he presides; it is not caused by other countries ripping us off… You go to a factory and it has robotics producing in the factory, that’s where jobs went. Millions of jobs on the assembly line didn’t go abroad, no one victimised us, no one tricked us. Go to an automobile plant there are fewer workers because there are robots on the assembly line, but somebody’s making the robots and there before your eyes the machines are doing them on the assembly line; it’s not that somebody else has stolen that work… I think Donald Trump doesn’t understand that actually in a deal both sides can gain… Mr Trump doesn’t get the idea that you can have a benefit from exchange not a winner and a loser… We believe the recent measures and other broad trade restrictions imposed by the US government could have a significant impact on economic relations between Japan and the US, and ultimately on the global economy and the multilateral trading system as a whole.”
On this they [countries of the world] are rational, and they’re angry; I think they’re correct.
“What’s happening is Donald Trump is succeeding in uniting the world against the United States, there has been of course for weeks the feeling that the US is not a properly run country, and that things are not in control, and what is happening is that other countries are changing their partnerships, they’re discussing among themselves we can’t go on this way, for example Korea and Japan… Warming of relations between China and India, this too is coming about because both countries understand there’s some weirdness going on in the United States… In other words [the US] is standing alone with no friends anywhere, not among our neighbours, not in Europe, not Japan, not Korea, not anybody. Because what Trump has done is an assault on a basic system of exchange in which the world operates, and this assault does damage to everybody starting with the United States.”
Before the interview concluded, Judge Napolitano asked his guest what can be done to remedy the situation, given Congress’s failure to secure a majority to abort Trump’s claim of an emergency that gives him the right to impose tax tariffs. To this Professor Sachs advised to go back to what the Founding Fathers established in 1787 to respond to King George III when Britain imposed taxes on the United States without representation of the US. “Well Trump has just done the same thing,” Professor Sachs said, “there’s been no representation in the US Congress; we just had a king who declared an emergency and then single-handedly broke up the world trading system with all the damage to the US economy. So the first remedy is somebody in Congress could do their job and read Article 1 Section 8 of the US Constitution which gives Congress and only Congress the authority to levy duties, tariffs, taxes. That’s their job not the job of the President of the United States… This is a blatantly unconstitutional action.”
