Unfortunately, this will not be over in 4 years. The American people have proven that they are unreliable, cruel, and stupid.
Even if someone sane takes office in 4 years it will maybe just give us a 4 year pause until the next lunatic comes in. There can be no long term plans or cooperation with the USA.
Australia doesn't give a shit about trade with the US. They are less than 5% of our exports. They are the ones that lose in a trade war.
We care about trade with China and when China got petty and Trumpish we handled it fine by diversifying markets until they got over their hissy fit and returned to their senses.
Often the US is an aggressive competitor in our export markets and if they score some own goals in trade wars our exporters will take the advantage just like they do to us whenever they can.
The real problem is what this idiocy does to the global economy as that impacts everyone.
This is what I expect Canada to do. Turn to Europe. It only makes sense. They are a nato country after all. I hope they won't fold as easily as mexico. Specifically because of Trump's psuedo-subtle threats of making Canada the 51st state. He never said that about Mexico.
That's a good point, the US has had tariff-happy presidents before...but it was a backwater, I guess a majority of americans wants to go back to being a backwater.
We already have a bunch of different import tariffs on stuff - it’s not new. Most goods from outside the EU/EEA/CH have at least a small percentage charged on them.
But, they’re selective and used to protect domestic industries- so for example, cheese from outside Europe has tariffs on it to protect the French and Spanish cheese industries. This is fine, because we can buy those European made cheeses for cheap.
This is different because we don’t apply enormous tariffs to stuff that mostly comes from abroad. That would be stupid.
Yeah, the EU has been eyeing Russian aluminum import sanctions for a while now. The timing couldn’t be better, cuz it’ll give them that last little push to finally do it.