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Your guide to what the 2024 American elections mean for Washington and the world
The writer is President Trump’s senior adviser to trade and production
The international trade system is broken – and the doctrine of Donald Trump’s mutual tariffs will fix it. This long restructuring will make both American and global economies more resilient and prosperous by restoring justice and balance into a manipulated system against America.
For decades, according to the unilateral rules of the World Trade Organization, the US has faced higher systematic tariffs by its main trading partners and much more punitive obstacles. The result is a national emergency that threatens our economic prosperity and national security.
At the heart of this crisis is a trade deficit in goods that have balloons in more than 1tn $ per year. Free trade economic models that predict chronic trade inequalities will always be eliminated through price adjustments through the exchange rate have died wrong.
US cumulative trade deficits in goods from 1976 – the year began chronic deficits – by 2024 they have transferred over $ 20 of American wealth to foreign hands. This is more than 60 percent of the US GDP in 2024. Foreign interests have taken over a large portion of US agricultural lands, housing, technology companies and even parts of our food supply.
A central impetus of this one-sided trade is the “most favored nation” of the WTO (MFN), which requires member states to apply the lowest tariff they offer to each nation to all WTO members. America’s trade partners can hold high, uniform fees across the board – with no incentive to negotiate more fair conditions with SH.BA
Since 1979, the year that production works peaked in America and the round of the General Tariffs and Trade Agreement, promoted in large landing tariffs led by the MF, the US has lost 6.8 million manufacturing work. Since China joined the WTO in 2001, the average weekly revenue in the JSC has mainly stalled – increasing just over 10 percent throughout the period.
Today, the average US MFN tariff is only 3.3 percent. China is twice that at 7.5 percent. Thailand and Vietnam both hovering about 10 percent and India stands at 17 percent stunning. Unbalances extend to the autos: EU uploads US car fee to 10 percent for salon cars, China’s base tariff for passenger vehicles is 25 percent.
Even worse than this is the non-tariff weapon barracks used by foreign nations to kill American exports, to unfairly increase their shipments to the US and to wallow their markets. These remedies include currency manipulation, value -added tax distortions, disposal, export subsidies, state -owned enterprises, theft of IP, discriminatory product standards, quotas, prohibitions, dark licensing, severe labor procedures, data localization mandates and more “law”. high of American technology. Moreover, many foreign competitors operate from sweatshops and pollution shelters that were morally stained and the global landscape from Asia and Africa to Latin America.
While the WTO technically allows for challenges, its system for resolving disputes is functionally broken – and the consequences have been catastrophic. The US has brought some high-profile agricultural trade disputes in the WTO-targeting foreign bans on birds, hormone-treated calf and genetically modified crops. In almost every case the US prevailed but the victories didn’t matter. The EU’s ban on the US-treated hormone calf was challenged in 1996, ruled illegal in 1998, and yet the EU has not raised it.
A trading system where we face higher tariffs, steep non-tanifier obstacles, and no valuable way to solution is nothing but a “system of honor” in a world without honor among the fraudsters. That is why America should – and now it is – protecting itself.
The doctrine of Trump’s mutual tariffs does exactly what the WTO has failed to do: it keeps foreign countries responsible. The US will now match the fundamentally higher tariffs and by suppressing the non-tariff barriers imposed by us by other nations. This is about justice, and no one can argue with that.
This is not a negotiation. For US, it is a national emergency caused by trade deficits caused by a deceived system.
President Trump is always ready to hear. But for those leaders of the world, who, after decades of fraud, suddenly offer to reduce fees – know this: this is just the beginning.
We will want to hear from the countries including Cambodia, Mexico and Vietnam that you will stop allowing China to avoid American tariffs by broadcasting trans exports to your countries. The much bigger threat lies in the network of non-tariff barriers that continue to kill the American industries. And that, too, has to be completed.
All America wants justice. President Trump is simply accusing you what you are charging us. What is fairer than that?
