Not really!

Mainstream media in the West is certainly shocked and well into catastrophising the impact of the tariffs recently introduced by US President Donald Trump. I don’t know how media in the Global South and East is portraying things but suspect it will be in a similar vein, the purpose of these tariffs is after all to disrupt the current global trade and financial systems.  The news is full of chaos in the financial and stock markets, of the certainty of business failures and increasing unemployment and of the apparent irrationality and stupidity of these measures.

Well, it shouldn’t have been a shock – the introduction of these tariffs has been well trailed and a rational response by other countries would have been to prepare for them, not fall back on panic and outrage, but there you go.

Yanis Varoufakis has a more nuanced analysis of what is going on, pointing out that there are similarities of intent with President Nixon taking the US $ off the gold standard in 1971, which worked well for its Ruling Class, but less well for its Working Class (and that of the Collective West and the Global South). He references Keynes in offering an alternative and much more productive way to manage trade surpluses and deficits between counties, arguing that those running a large trade surplus with the US cannot respond effectively by retaliatory tariffs of their own. He advocates that the most effective response is to re-balance economies by focusing on internal investment – technology, green energy, public infrastructure and welfare services and makes the obvious point that such upheavals provide opportunities as well as threats.

Worth a listen at 24 minutes.