In his first week in office, President Trump tried to go through governments around the world to stop drug flow to America, accepted aircraft full of deported migrants, stopped wars, and advance territory to the United States.
For all of them, he deployed a common threat: a country that did not meet its requirements would face hard tariffs to products that they send to US consumers.
Mr. Trump has long dominated the tariffs as a weapon to solve business fears. However, the president now often uses them to achieve questions that have little to do with trade.
It is rarely seen from other presidents and never at this frequency. While Mr. Trump threatened governments as Mexico with tariffs on immigration issues In his first term of officeNow it seems that such a threat makes almost daily, including Sunday when She said Colombia to face tariffs After her government turned the aircraft bearing deported immigrants.
“The willingness to rhetorically throw a kitchen sink and use a whole set of tools is trying to send a message to other countries outside Colombia, that they should follow and find ways to deal with these concerns,” said Rachel Ziemba, an auxiliary leading at the center for new American security.
Last week, Mr. Trump threatened to give 25 % tariff on Canada and Mexico products and 10 % tariff on Chinese products on February, unless these countries have made drugs and migrants to the United States. Previously threatened to punish Denmark tariffs if his government did not proceed to Greenland to the United States and Save fees on Russia If it did not end in Ukraine.
Mr. Trump on Sunday afternoon he wrote On the social media that he would deposit 25 percent of tariffs in Colombia and increase them to 50 percent in one week. Within a few hours Colombian President, Gustavo Petro, said He would intervene with his own tariffs. On Sunday evening, however, the White House issued a statement that Mr. Petro agreed to all his conditions and that Mr. Trump would have a threat of tariffs and sanctions “in reserve”.
This fast solution can also support Mr. Trump’s tariffs to extract concessions that have nothing to do with typical business relations.
On Monday, he spoke with the Republicans in Florida, Florida, and Mr. Trump mentioned his threat that countries like Colombia, Mexico and Canada reduce the flow of migrants to the United States or facing tariffs.
“They will take them back quickly and if they are not, they will pay a very high economic price,” he said.
Ted Murphy, a lawyer in Sidley Austin, who solves trade -related problems, said that tariffs would be a significant blow to the sectors that rely on imports from Colombia, but the consequences of the threat were much wider.
“The tariffs could be used in response to almost anything,” he said.
Even an agreement on free trade with the United States is not a guarantee of security: Colombia in 2011 signed such an agreement with the United States, while Mr. Trump himself signed an agreement on the American Amexika-Canada in 2020.
Mr. Trump is also not limited to the business laws he relied on to impose tariffs in his first term, Murphy said. For Colombia and other nations, Mr. Trump seemed to be willing to deploy legal status – the International Act on emergency economic powers of 1977 or IEEPA – which gives the presidents wide powers to impose business and sanctions if they declare a national emergency situation.
Mr. Murphy said that Mr. Trump Bar said that the national emergency situation seemed “not too high”.
Governments in Mexico, Canada, Europe, China, China and elsewhere have prepared lists of retaliation tariffs that may apply to American products if Mr. Trump decides to watch his own fees. However, foreign officials seem to be well aware of the economic damage that would cause cross -border tariffs and have tried to degrade tensions to avoid damaging trade war.
Kaja Kallas, the highest diplomat of the European Union, said on Monday that Europe must be united because Trump’s administration threatens to be in the era of changes in political changes, including tariffs.
“When the United States is moving to a transaction approach, Europe must close the series,” said Mrs. Kallas, spoke at a press conference after meeting Foreign Ministers in Brussels.
“Europe is an economic heavy and geopolitical partner,” she added.
The presidential use of measures related to trade -related trade is not without precedents. Douglas A. Irwin, an economic historian at Dartmouth College, pointed out that President Richard Nixon made the return of Okinawa to Japan about his consent to limit the amount of textile sent to the United States. President Gerald Ford signed a Jackson-Vanik amendment, who combined the granting of the Soviet Union trading status of the “most popular nation”-and the lower tariff rates were emigrated to the Jews.
Yet Mr. Irwin called Mr. Trump’s “unusual” approach.
“Trump is very obvious in his approach,” he said.
In recent decades, presidents have been less willing to control tariffs or other measures that would limit trade, partly from respect for the world business organization. WTO members, including the United States, agreed with certain rules where and how they store tariffs on other countries within the organization.
WTO carries exceptions to its members to act on national security issues, and government has used this exception liberally in recent years by imposing tariffs or limiting certain types of trade.
ESwar Prasad, a professor of business policy at the Cornell University, said that many administrations, including Joseph R. Biden Jr., used national security reflections “as a veil to implement tariffs and other protectionist measures without taking before the WTO rules”.
Although no US President said the threat of tariffs, as Mr. Trump has, pushed other countries with other types of economic measures such as sanctions or embargo. And in the last decades, US presidents have been more willing to use trade as carrots, rather than a stick that holds prospects for free trade agreements and other preferential business dealing with governments that politically support the country.
If Mr. Trump actually goes through his tariffs, it remains to be found whether the US courts will eventually decide to limit them.
Peter Harrell, who worked as the head of the White House director for the International Economy Administration of Biden, noted, on social media that IEEPA has never been used to store the types of tariffs that Mr. Trump threatened Colombia, Canada and Mexico. (Mr. Nixone Used the status of the precursortrading in the enemy law of 1917 to briefly impose a 10 % universal tariff in 1971 to deal with business balance, unemployment and inflation.)
Mr. Harrell suggested that such an extensive interpretation of the law could face legal challenges. He said he was “skeptical”, that the courts would allow Mr. Trump to use the legal status to store a wide global tariff, but more targeted tariffs such as those in Colombia would be a much closer and more interesting test case “.
Jeanna Smialek Messages from London contributed.
