US President Donald Trump told world business leaders Thursday to manufacture in the United States or face tariffs, in his first major speech to global leaders since returning to the White House this week.
Since his inauguration on Monday, Trump has said that Washington could impose steep tariffs on major trading partners Canada, Mexico and China as soon as February 1.
This is even as the World Trade Organisation chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has urged nations Thursday to keep calm over tariffs, warning that a tit-for-tat trade war would be “catastrophic” for the world economy.
Okonjo-Iweala issued her appeal during a panel discussion on tariffs at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
The WTO director-general urged cooler heads to prevail, quipping: “Please let’s not hyperventilate. I know we are here to discuss tariffs. I’ve been saying to everybody: could we chill, also. I just sense a lot of hyperventilation.”
She recalled the fallout from the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in the United States during the Great Depression in 1930, which prompted retaliation and worsened the global economic crisis at the time.
“We are very much saying to our members at the WTO: you have other avenues. Even if a tariff is levied, please keep calm, don’t wake up and without the necessary groundwork levy your own,” she said.
“If we have tit-for-tat retaliation, whether it’s 25 percent tariffs, 60 percent, and we go to where we were in the 1930s, we are going to see double-digit global GDP losses, double-digit. That’s catastrophic.”
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However, Trump has also signed a flurry of executive orders, pulling the United States out of the Paris Climate Accords and the World Health Organisation.
“Come make your product in America and we will give you among the lowest taxes of any nation on earth,” Trump said on Thursday, speaking remotely to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
“But if you don’t make your product in America, which is your prerogative, then very simply you will have to pay a tariff,” he added.
In his speech, he added that he believed lower oil prices would help end the war in Ukraine instantly.
“I’m also going to ask Saudi Arabia and OPEC to bring down the cost of oil,” referring to the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.
“If the price came down, the Russia-Ukraine war would end immediately,” he said.
“Right now, the price is high enough that that war will continue,” he added.
Trump said he expected to have “a very good relationship” with China, but stressed that “all we want is fairness.”
– ‘Only two genders’ –
During his first administration, Trump engaged in an escalating tariffs war with Beijing, and he has threatened higher duties on the campaign trail as well.
In wide-ranging remarks, Trump also signalled he would exert pressure to bring interest rates lower.
“I’ll demand that interest rates drop immediately,” he said. “Likewise, they should be dropping all over the world. Interest rates should follow us all over.”
He also spoke on the issue of gender surgery, saying he has made it “official policy of the United States, that there are only two genders, male and female”.
He took aim at “men participating in women’s sports” while adding that gender operations “will occur very rarely”.
Since taking office, Trump has vowed an immediate overhaul of the US trade system, promising to tariff and tax foreign countries to the benefit of US citizens.
He has signed an order directing agencies to study trade issues ranging from deficits to unfair practices — paving the way towards further tariffs in the future. AFP
