The concerns are justified, but what is not clear today is whether there will be any profit from all this for anyone. As for the war in Ukraine, there will be no profit either for Europe, which is suffering a huge economic impact from this war, or for the US – Trump has repeatedly stated that he will stop this war. Perhaps there is profit for Russia, which has occupied large parts of Ukraine, but it cannot take for granted that it will keep what it has occupied after the peace negotiations. In fact, while there is no clear profit, there is so far enormous damage for everyone, on the one hand from the death of soldiers and the destruction of cities, industries, crops, but also from the economic impact. In the event of an escalation of the war, everyone will lose. If nuclear weapons are used, nothing will be left standing and that is when no one will definitely win.
As for the trade war, Trump is making his threats more specific and announcing large tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico and China. His aim is to improve the balance of trade between these countries and the US, that is, to pressure these countries to buy more American products. He will do the same with Europe, where tariffs are expected to be imposed on European products imported into the US – the German car industry is in a panic. He is doing the same with NATO, that is, he is pressuring the alliance countries to pay their contributions and to buy more American weapons.
All of this together shows that we are in the era of threats, so that negotiations can begin and new agreements can be concluded in place of the old ones.
In other words, Trump is pressuring everyone to conclude agreements – he is a businessman after all – for the benefit of America.
In both trade wars and real wars, in order to achieve balance and peace, there must first be great pressure, anxiety, and panic. Only through this path do everyone sit down at the negotiating table and find the will to make concessions and compromises. And that is what we are experiencing today. The pressure to create panic. With the escalation of the war in the last week, everyone began to be afraid. For example, the Germans are giving their citizens instructions about shelters and distributing survival leaflets in case of war. All of this is actually useless, for the simple reason that there are not enough shelters. Germany has shelters that can accommodate 500,000 people and has a population of 84 million.
But the point is that these discussions about shelters, the directives, the nuclear declarations, the war bells that are ringing, cause the necessary panic for everyone to choose peace and sit down at the negotiating table. The threat of import tariffs also causes panic in businesses and states and also forces everyone to sit down at a negotiating table to make mutually beneficial agreements, even if with concessions.
Living – like all of us – for decades in an era of peace and economic growth, it is very difficult for us to believe that we are really going to a world war, the thought of a nuclear war seems unthinkable and paranoid to us, just as the return to protectionism, to international trade, seems detrimental to everyone.
For this reason, perhaps, we consider that everything that is happening today is a threat, in order to form new agreements. This is the optimistic scenario. But it may also be the only one. Because if things are not like this, if humanity is indeed heading for a third world war that could very soon turn nuclear, if we really return to extreme protectionism in international trade, we will not only have taken a huge step backwards, we will have enormous costs for everyone, with no gain for anyone. And that does not seem logical, on the contrary it seems completely improbable, since no one wins.
But you never know, as detectives say in the movies, in the end the autopsy will show.
