Former US ambassador to EU: Trump's trade war will have "long-term consequences"
US President Donald Trump's foreign policy strategy is causing irreparable damage to the global trading system with long-term repercussions, warns former US Ambassador to the European Union (EU) Anthony Gardner (The Finance Ticker).
"This is a president who is very protectionist, he wants to repatriate the supply chain back to the United States," he said. “He doesn't believe in a multilateral trade order or in institutions like the WTO. Therefore, the system suffers a lot of damage with long-term consequences. ”
Other foreign policy experts agree with Gardner.
Kristen Boone, professor of law at Seton Hall University, argued that the US withdrawal from multilateralism and the international organizations created after World War II “signals a departure from participation and cooperation that can put us on the path to future domestic and international unrest. ”
Trump pursued an America First Policy, rejecting multilateral treaties and pursuing a unilateral strategy against China during the trade war.
During the G7 international summit in France, he was asked about his foreign policy strategy for the ongoing negotiations, as his statement sometimes seems contradictory.
“This is the way I negotiate, it has worked well for me over the years,” President Trump responded.
"Frontal attack" on the economic system of China
Gardner, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama and served as ambassador to the EU from 2014 to 2017, also said Trump's demands on China were perceived as "a head-on attack on their economic system."
“The president has stepped up the pressure in some ways that I think are really useless because he made it a real conflict between the two systems,” Gardner said. “And as far as I understand, some of its demands are so fundamental that they require the Chinese to change some key parts of their economic system, including the role of state-owned enterprises, which I think the Chinese will not be doing.
He continued, "I think they see this as a head-on attack on their economic system, not just a targeted series of requests to change their market to make it more open to, for example, US investments and US exports." .