Emmanuel Macron
Dice of 25% on steel and aluminum and then mutual rates. These are the last two chapters of the commercial war conducted by Donald Trump against friends and enemies abroad, while at home he continues to dismantle the federal administration with Elon Musk, between controversy and a barrage of legal causes. The president is ready to sign the umpteenth executive orders in the oval study, first the one on metals and on Tuesday or Wednesday the other, as he announced on the Air Force One while he flew to see the Super Bowl.
“The production of steel is an important component of the new golden age promised by Trump”, explained to the CNBC one of its main economic councilors, Kevin Hassett. It is one of the reasons why the Tycoon has also shared Biden’s stop to the sale of Us Steel to the Japanese, eventually agreeing on their investment but without taking control of it. The measure will particularly affect Canada, the main steel exporter and aluminum in the USA (with a 25%share), Mexico (12%), Brazil, South Korea but also the EU, for which the States United are the largest market for the export of the two metals.
Brussels awaits the notification of the move, but Paris and Berlin have already reacted. The French president Emmanuel Macron He warned that dice uses on Europe would also damage the United States by increasing inflation and has sworn in an interview with the CNN that he is ready for a new face to face with Trump on rates.
“The European Union is your first problem? No, I don’t think. Your first problem is China, so you should focus on the first problem,” he said. “The European Union will respond to the new duties,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot echoed him. The German chancellor Olaf Scholz also on the same line: “I say it with great prudence but also with great clarity, as a European Union we can quickly react to the duties, if it should become necessary”.
Trump had already introduced duties on steel (25%) and aluminum (10%) to protect American production from what in his opinion was a unfair competition, favored by state subsidies. Since then the Italian export of steel to the US has lost two thirds of the altitude, according to Federacciai. After a year the Tycoon had revoked them for Canada and Mexico, but now it relaunches them, ignoring the ban on the new commercial agreement that binds the three North American countries. Then it will be the turn of the so -called mutual duties. “It is very simple, if they tax us, we tax them, in the same way,” he explained.
In the election campaign he had even promised a law in congress, the mutual trade Act, but in the meantime he proceeds to strokes executive orders. In recent weeks, the president had announced 25% duties in Canada and Mexico on all goods, except for suspending them for a month for the efforts shown in the fight against Fenanyl and illegal trafficking. And 10% of 525 billion of China goods, which responded with 15% duties entered into force today but only on 14 billion of American goods, perhaps to leave room for negotiations.
In the meantime, the dark of The Donald falls everywhere, from the penny to the consultative board of the armed forces, while the dem launches a task force (also legal) of quick response and a platform for ‘whistleblower’, the administration moles (protected By law, editor’s note) ready to report any violations by Trump and Doge Musk.
But the alarms continue: by five former Treasury Secretaries, who warn on “Democracy under attack” from the columns of the New York Times, to about 200 former US national security managers who have worked for or with the CIA, who in a letter to the top of the intelligence commissions of Chamber and Senate express “profound concern” for the incentivized exodus offered to the agency’s officials and warn against “terrible consequences”. By evoking the risk of creating a “emptiness of intelligence”, to undermine partnerships with 007 allies as well as the skills to combat threats of China, Russia and Iran.