Trupism Signals Death of Liberalism, Globalization

Americans Stockpile Goods as Trade War Escalates

Date: 08 April 2025 - 21:48

News ID: ۱۳۸۲۷۸

Euronext CEO: U.S. Starting to Look Like Emerging Market

PARIS (Dispatches) -- A wide range of economists are voicing alarm over President Donald Trump’s steep tariffs on imports into the United States, sparking a trade war that experts say could tip many countries into recession.
For Thomas Piketty, French author of the best-selling “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”, “Trumpism is first of all a reaction to the failure of Reaganism” -- the liberalization of President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.
“Republicans realize that economic liberalism and globalization have not benefitted the middle class as they said they would,” the economist told AFP.
“So now they’re using the rest of the world as a scapegoat,” he said. “But it’s not going to work: the Trump cocktail is simply going to generate more inflation and more inequalities.”
Paul Krugman, the Nobel economics prize laureate, said the United States was essentially the founder of the modern trade system that had led to lower tariffs over the past decades.
“Donald Trump burned it all down,” Krugman wrote on his popular Substack blog before the president’s baseline 10 percent tariffs on imports took effect on Saturday.
“Trump isn’t really trying to accomplish economic goals. This should all be seen as a dominance display, intended to shock and awe people and make them grovel,” he said.
Krugman accused the U.S. administration of “malignant stupidity” at a time when “the fate of the world economy is on the line”.
“How can anyone, whether they’re businesspeople or foreign governments, trust anything coming out of an administration that behaves like this?”
For Nasser Saidi, a former economy minister of Lebanon, “a major problem is the impact on the least-developed and emerging countries” from Trump’s “seismic shock to the global trade landscape”.
“Countries like Egypt, Lebanon or Jordan are going to face disruptions in terms of their trade relations” as well as the prospect of cuts to foreign investments.
“When you have tariffs of this type being set up, high levels of tariffs with no economic basis, what you’re going to do is severely disrupt supply chains,” he added.
“I think we’re finished with the era of globalization and liberalization”, which will lead countries in the Middle East, for example, to reinforce ties with Asian partners.
Kako Nubukpo, an economist and former government minister in Togo, warned that Trump’s tariffs will hit African nations already suffering from political difficulties.
“Those left behind by globalization appear more and more numerous. And so we’ve seen an increase in illiberal regimes, whether that’s in Europe, Africa or America,” he said.
But “protectionism is a weapon of the weak, and I think Trump has realized that in the competition with China, the United States is now the weaker one.”
“It’s a sort of neo-mercantilism, which assumes that international trade is a zero-sum game and fits perfectly with a belligerent worldview,” Nubukpo said.
The United States is starting to resemble an emerging market more than a developed country, the head of pan-European stock exchange operator Euronext said.
“Fear exists all over,” Euronext CEO Stephane Boujnah told France Inter radio. “The country (United States) is unrecognizable and we are living in a transition period. There is a certain form of mourning, because the United States that we had known for the most part as a dominant nation resembled the values and institutions of Europe and now resembles more an emerging market.”
Boujnah said investors had been forced to grapple with uncertainty since Trump took office in January. “People ... have difficulty understanding the volatility of decisions that are made, so this worry is real, and it is a form of intimidation that diffuses in the system
and is difficult to navigate,” he said.
Trump has said the tariffs - a minimum of 10% for all U.S. imports, with targeted rates of up to 50% - would help the United States recapture an industrial base that he says has withered over decades of trade liberalization.
Emerging markets often use tariffs to protect their industries while they try to develop.
Pushing a shopping cart down the aisle of a Walmart Supercenter, Thomas Jennings, 53, loaded up on juices, condiments and whatever he could think of.
“I’m buying double of whatever - beans, canned goods, flour, you name it,” he said. His strategy is to stock up as much as possible before the Trump administration’s latest round of import tariffs takes effect on Wednesday.
Earlier at Costco, Jennings bought flour, sugar and water in bulk. “There’s a recession coming and I am preparing for the worst,” he said.
Like a growing number of U.S. shoppers, Jennings believes retail prices will soon rise because of Trump’s tariffs.
The Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research group, said the new levies will cost Americans $3.1 trillion over the next 10 years, amounting to a roughly $2,100 tax increase per household in 2025 alone.
Even as many shoppers take a wait-and-see approach, some fear that any panic would trigger a stockpiling frenzy that intensifies on expectations of even worse inflation, they told Reuters.
Manish Kapoor, founder of GCG, a supply chain management firm outside Los Angeles, said the tariffs are reawakening fears of empty store shelves encountered during the pandemic, when supply chain disruptions led to product shortages and inflation.
“We saw this during COVID as well, where everybody frantically went and grabbed everything on store shelves, whether they needed it or not,” Kapoor said.
Angelo Barrio, 55, a retired garment industry professional, said Trump’s tactics of “muddying the water and causing chaos” have worried him and his friends about the economy’s direction.
At Costco this week, he stocked up on Crest toothpaste, soap, water and rice to fill six canisters already stuffed with canned goods in his temperature-controlled basement.
At Walmart, he grabbed two more bottles of olive oil, bringing his total stockpile to 20 bottles. “You can never be sure how much you’ll need,” he said.
Barrio is sympathetic towards China, which Trump threatened on Monday with an additional 50% tariff if Beijing does not withdraw its retaliatory tariffs on the United States.
“They are simply getting penalized for no fault of their own,” he said. “I have always been happy that they are able to provide us things at such low prices.”
Maggie Collins, who is in her mid-60s, said she is “shaking in my boots” as she worries about Trump’s tariffs and their impact on senior citizens.