AS I SEE IT
BY MARIANNE HERON
A new verb has joined my vocabulary: it’s to Trumple. In a sense it’s a close relation of to trample, meaning to tread on and flatten things – powerful elephants, are very good at this. Trumpling is something unique to Donald Trump’s behaviour towards the world and I realise that in the past months, especially the last few weeks, I have been feeling Trumpled upon.
The effect on me is psychological for now, inducing worry and gloom, with impact on my pension and the cost of living maybe coming later. For others, the effect as the 20% Liberation Day tariff imposed on goods from the EU including Ireland, was going to be immediate except – drum roll! – it has now been changed to 10%. The Trumpled world now has a reprieve of 80 plus days at 10% tariffs while nail-biting negotiations take place over eventual figures.
Trump’s trade war tariffs also bring threat of pain to come, with reduced orders from the US, increased prices for exporting there, stalled job-creating investment, shorter working weeks and redundancy with a loss of thousands of jobs.
When the President of the US holds up a board listing imaginary tariffs levied by countries that take advantage of the US that is based on an outright lie, it is the kind of thing that can do your head in… if you let it.
The Trumped-up figures are based on the trade deficit between the US and its trading partners and the result is halved to arrive at the threatened tariffs. The trade war, Trump believes, will bring manufacturing back home and teach those who have been “ripping off” the US a lesson.
This is a classic case of ‘other blaming’ which avoids responsibility for what happened, when in reality the decisions to manufacture or buy products from more efficient sources were made in the US. The massive imbalance in pharmaceutical trade in Ireland’s favour is the result of decisions made by US pharma companies to base their intellectual property rights in Ireland, so that they pay tax here at a low rate, while declaring losses in the US and avoiding tax there.
Tariffs aren’t going to move jobs back to the US quickly, as manufacturing capabilities can take years to set up. Trump has been boasting about Honda’s $1Bn investment to build EVs in Ohio as an example. But Honda have been manufacturing in Ohio for 45 years and have 12 plants in the US. Hardly an overnight story!
The technique behind Trumpling involves threats to frighten everyone, combined with uncertainty like bizarre plans to take over Canada, Greenland or Gaza. So how can we stop being Trumpled on, when dire warnings about the negative impact of trade wars and recession don’t work?
Hitting back aggressively as the Chinese have done with a 34% tit-for-tat tariff didn’t work too well. It escalated matters and the Chinese were threatened with a 104% tariff, another round later it is 125%. Sitting back and hoping that the tariffs will come back to bite Trump and that common sense will prevail is more hopeful. Money talks. Plummeting stock markets didn’t deter Trump but the tumbling Bond markets did and resulted in his step back to 10% tariffs.
In the US rising cost of living caused by tariffs may impact Trump’s popularity with MAGA supporters. The reaction and protests against Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) which has resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of jobs, is promising, with Musk having had to flee threats to his life.
A boycott might help; we could manage without Harley David motor cycles and Bourbon. But the difficulty here is that supply chains are so complex now that we could end up without things vital to our economy. Maybe the EU’s approach is the wisest,” Be strong together,” as European Commission President Ursula van Der Leyen put it and to respond rather than react, and then negotiate.
To conquer fear of Trumpling we could go back 2,000 years to the wisdom of the Stoics. Their philosophy was to manage your own emotions, then you were better placed to deal with external events .In other words, keep calm and carry on. And, while we are at it, we could put our own house in order.
