Donald Trump has “Cried Havoc! and let slip the dogs of war” – trade war, that is – to bay at and harass the good people of Canada and Mexico, America’s largest trading partners. He imposed a tax of 25% on imports to the United States from each country.
He said he did this to pressure Canada and Mexico to do more to protect America’s borders from illegal immigration and to stop the importation by Americans of the drug, fentanyl.
This is Godfather stuff: “Give them a deal they can’t refuse!”
An apt comment is: “Those whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad.”
(In verses 620–623 of his play Antigone, Sophocles wrote: “Evil appears as good in the minds of those whom god leads to destruction.”)
Mexico and Canada immediately reciprocated, taxing imports from the U.S. to their countries.
Now, if we ask the old question “Qui bono?” – to whose benefit? – asked by the ancient Roman judge, Lucius Cassius, and passed on to us by Cicero in one of his orations against dictatorial Mark Antony, the most likely answer is: “No one.”
The immediate effect will be fewer goods showing up in American markets and higher prices for whatever is imported, both eventualities lowering the real American standard of living.
Canadian and Mexican manufactures will not likely lower their net profit margins by whatever it takes to match the 25% increase in gross sales prices to be paid by American consumers so that Trump’s taxes will have no effect on American consumers. As the prices on Canadian and Mexican goods go up, the quantity sold to Americans will go down. That is the law of human nature – marginal utility curves.
In the 1930s, the American Smoot Hawley tariffs contributed to worsening the worldwide great depression, adding momentum to the rise of Hitler and Mussolini and so contributing to World War II, which killed a lot of people.
Trump’s taxes on imports will also lower economic output in Canada and Mexico.
It’s a win/lose game of chicken. Who will blink first?
On January 31, Trump also mentioned imposing taxes on goods imported from the European Union and, in general, on computer chips, steel, oil, gas, copper and pharmaceuticals.
With his tariffs, Trump has violated the Caux Round Table Principles for Business:
Principle 5: Support Responsible Globalization
A responsible business, as a participant in the global marketplace, supports open and fair multilateral trade. A responsible business supports reform of domestic rules and regulations where they unreasonably hinder global commerce.
His tariffs are a form of “brute” not moral capitalism, consistent with the thinking of Herbert Spencer, who argued that humans, like all other members of the animal kingdom, do not have a moral sense, only a predatory instinct to kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, whereby only the fittest survive, while the rest find themselves dishonorable graves (see Chapter 3 in my book. Moral Capitalism).
The first meeting of the Caux Round Table was convened at Mountain House in Caux, Switzerland, to discuss ending the trade war between Japan and the U.S./E.U., triggered by Japanese capitalistic prowess in making consumer electronics and automobiles of better quality and at lower cost than the Americans and Europeans were able to do.
By raising their cost, the American and European governments prevented their citizens from personally benefiting from Japanese innovations and quality improvements.
On their side, however, the Japanese restricted the import of American agricultural products to protect Japanese farmers and their small rural communities, which were no longer price competitive.
The business leaders gathered at that first meeting of the Caux Round Table came to an agreement on ethical grounds that all deserve access to the fruits of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” that, through ethical, reciprocally balanced relationships and cooperation, improves quality, increases quantity and lowers prices through innovation.
In this regard, consider what DeepSeek just did to the demand curve for AI.