America has sneezed and the rest of the world has caught a cold

US President Donald Trump rocked the world with his recent “declaration of economic independence.” He announced a raft of reciprocal tariffs on goods imported into the US, including a 10 per cent baseline tariff. The entire world reacted.

A headline in the New York Times read, 'Trump trade war risks forfeiting America’s economic primacy'. The article that followed it declared, “The US has steered an economic order for 80 years based on trade and trust, making the country the world’s financial superpower. That vision is now blurred.”

Trump’s form of economic irredentism does not come as a surprise. He has for years called for retaliatory tariffs against the US’ trading partners. Speaking to TV show host Oprah Winfrey decades ago, he called for a revision of America’s foreign policy by making its “allies pay their fair share,” further saying, “they lived as kings” at the expense of US and its citizens.

Trump won the presidency last year with an overwhelming mandate. This resounding win was driven by the 'putting America first' policy which Wikipedia describes as “disregarding global affairs and focusing solely on domestic policy in the United States.”

Trump’s reciprocal tariffs are intended to, in his words, “bring back jobs and factories” to the US. They (tariffs) are also intended to do away with de minimis, where items considered too insignificant in value are not subjected to import taxes. De minimis has been abused by some importers to fuel the recreational drug epidemic in the US with substances like fentanyl smuggled through its borders.

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America’s exalted status as the world’s richest nation and sole financial superpower was acquired by default. Reluctantly dragged into the Second World War through the bombing of Pearl Harbour, it has taken on the responsibility of shaping the post-war global order.  It has acted as policeman of the free world, stemming the encroachment of the communist East through involvement in the Vietnamese war.

It has also been involved in the Kuwait-Iraq conflict through Operation Desert Storm, Afghanistan and other theatres of war. But the fatigue induced by the keeping of global peace at its expense is now showing. It complains that Europe is freeloading yet it benefits the most from America’s attempts to keep the Suez Canal safe from Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

Further, responsibilities come with privileges. Remove these privileges and the responsibilities become burdensome. Erosion of pre-eminence of the US dollar as the global reserve currency is one such withdrawal of privilege. Another is the upended advantage enjoyed by American businesses globally and the loss of prestige as the putative global investment and innovative hub.

Trump’s policies appear to repudiate soft power tools like economic and humanitarian aid. Other axes of power have emerged like the Orient and the Middle East that have no illusions of human rights campaigns or the push for accountable leadership hitherto underwritten by the US. They are interested only in commercial concerns and profits which have elevated them to near superpower status to the detriment of US exceptionalism.

It is still early days and the impact of Trump’s policies is yet to be fully realised. One thing is clear though; America has sneezed and the rest of the world has caught a cold.

Mr Khafafa is a public policy analyst