WAYNE KUBLALSINGH
A TARIFF is a tax. It is a tax imposed by a government on goods imported into, and occasionally exported from, a country. In order to bypass the US Congress, the authority constitutionally charged to impose taxes, President Donald Trump has invoked the National Emergencies Act, which allows him to declare an emergency with nothing more than a signature on his executive order. But what is the national emergency?
Here is Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s White House press secretary:
“This is a national emergency. We have a (US)$1.2 trillion trade deficit. We've had 90,000 factories closed across our heartland. We've had five million manufacturing jobs go overseas since 1997. And President Trump is finally doing something about it by implementing these reciprocal tariffs. It's the golden rule for the Golden Age of America. As for prices and what the American public can expect. They can expect price stability. They can expect to buy American. It's a patriotic thing to do.”
Let us examine Leavitt’s AI recital:
Trump’s national emergency. The US Congress National Emergency Act (1976) gives powers to the president to invoke a national emergency. But it provides no clear definition of what constitutes a national emergency. However, a special committee of the 94th Congress (1975-1977) attached its own qualifications to the president’s powers: A president must invoke such powers if it “is essential to the preservation, protection, and defence of the constitution, and is essential to the common defence, safety, or well-being of the territory and people of the United States…”
Does Trump, a firm constitutionalist, really believe that the framers of the act intended for his tariff regime to be essential to the “preservation, protection, and defence of the constitution,” to the “common defence, safety or well-being of the territory and people of the US?” Hardly. This tariff by emergency powers and executive signature is really a gimmick, a contrivance, for Trump to wield his way.
A US$1.2 trillion trade deficit. Assuming that these figures are correct, who is to blame for this deficit? Trump has imposed a 54 per cent tariff on Chinese goods. China produces cheaper. Even high-quality modern edge goods: electric vehicles, AI apps, zero-carbon energy systems, battery supply chains, fourth-generation nuclear systems, advanced shipping, its Belt and Road Initiative.
The China-US trade deficit exists because US consumers choose to buy China. In preference to made in America. The asymmetry is in skills, creativity, genius, the superiority of the Chinese manufacturing ecology. Tariffs will not solve these basic US challenges; or the US consumer’s freedom to choose.
90,000 factories closed across the heartland. America, and Europe, simply cannot compete. Think of low labour prices, high manufacturing density, billions of literate and employable youth in China, South-East Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam), Japan, India, Brazil. The bourgeois manufactory has become pandemic. Pandora has escaped her box.
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