A wide range of economists are voicing alarm over President Donald Trump’s steep tariffs on imports into the United States, sparking a trade war that experts say could tip many countries into recession. Here are comments by some leading economists:
For Thomas Piketty, French author of the bestselling Capital in the Twenty-First Century, “Trumpism is first of all a reaction to the failure of Reaganism” – the liberalisation of president Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.
“Republicans realise that economic liberalism and globalisation have not benefited the middle class as they said they would,” the left-leaning economist said.
“So now they’re using the rest of the world as a scapegoat,” he said. “But it’s not going to work: the Trump cocktail is simply going to generate more inflation and more inequalities.”
In response, “Europe needs to define its own priorities and prepare for the global recession that’s coming” with a massive investment plan in “energy and transport infrastructure, education, research and health”.
Paul Krugman, the Nobel economics prize laureate, said the US was essentially the founder of the modern trade system that had led to lower tariffs over the past decades.
