3/4/2025–|Last update: 3/4/202512:37 AM (Mecca time)
The Wall Street Journal and Newsweek magazine addressed the new customs duties announced by US President Donald Trump from several angles, in which she saw in an effort to end the era of globalization, and an attempt to reshape the American economy and the global trade system, expected to reverse results.
Wall Street Journal, a conservative newspaper usually supporting Trump, said that the message that sends the largest customs duties campaign to the president, to date, to American and foreign companies, is that the era of globalization has ended, noting that what Trump wants to return companies to the United States will not be easy.
Trump said in a ceremony, on Wednesday, that “jobs and factories will return strongly to our country, and you see that really happens.”
Although some companies announced the expansion of their operations in the United States in response to Trump’s customs duties, the universal suppression of the global supply chains and the transition to the United States the way Trump wants a difficult task, due to the costs of this.
The necessity of reforming global trade
Executive officials say that there is a danger that Trump reduces customs duties if he is able to use them to extract commercial concessions from other countries, and economists warn that the world may face an investment crisis that weakens growth, if companies sculpt aside, waiting for the fog of trade war.
Trump hopes that the walls of high customs tariffs will herald a golden age of abundant industrial functions, prosperity and abundance of industrial production throughout the United States, to blame the greedy commercial practices pursued by China, the European Union and other commercial partners, in the absorption of jobs and industries.
Trump singled out China with attention, because it was the largest beneficiaries of the direction of transporting industries abroad, until it dominated the global manufacturing with a trade surplus of trillion dollars last year, and therefore the new customs duties will be added by 34% to the previous fees by 20% due to its role in the Fintanel trade, to reach 54% after April 9, and it may reach 79% if Trump imposes 25% fees to buy Venezuelan oil.
Pointing the increasing geopolitical tensions between Washington and Beijing and the repercussions of the Corona’s pandemic, multinationals added new production bases outside China, and Chinese companies themselves built their own production facilities abroad, to continue serving their multinational customers and avoid American customs duties on Chinese imports.
However, the result for the United States was a decrease in the share of its imports coming from China, with the widening deficit with Vietnam, Mexico and other countries, as the total US trade account deficit reached $ 1.1 trillion in 2024, which confirms to Trump and his allies the necessity of reforming global trade, the newspaper says.
A new step towards protectionism
In a separate report, the same newspaper said that Trump’s new customs duties are another major step towards a new era of commercial protectionism, noting that the bombing of the global trade system has consequences, the president prefers to avoid talking about it.
The newspaper listed some of the emerging consequences in this new protectionist age, although the details are not clear, until now, as it says, including that the total economic impact of customs duties is unknown, and if the response of the countries is wide -scale revenge, the result may be the contraction of global trade, slowing growth, stagnation, or worse.
The newspaper considered that the single customs duties imposed by Mr. Trump will harm the expansion of American commodity and services markets, which was one of the long -term American commercial goals, and American exports will suffer with the conclusion of other countries commercial agreements that grant preferential treatment to non -American companies.
The most dangerous – according to the newspaper – is that this means the end of the American economic leadership, which has produced the deployment of free trade seven decades of increasing prosperity at home and abroad, and has made the US share of global GDP stable at about 25% for decades.
The cost of losing American influence will be exorbitant – according to the newspaper – because the attractiveness of the American market and the US military power is not two cafeteria to subjugate states, as Trump believes, and therefore he breaks confidence in his country by punishing the allies and canceling the United States, Mexico and Canada agreement that he negotiated in his first term.
It will also be a great opportunity for China, which can use its large market to courtship to America’s allies, especially South Korea and Japan, then Europe in light of doubts about reaching the American market.
Opposite
As for Newsweek, she saw that Trump’s new comprehensive customs duties may come with counter -results, surprisingly, that Trump turns his winning pledge to reform the economy and reduce prices, just two months after his second term, into a heavy burden on his commercial policies that rocked the stock market and raised consumer concerns about high costs and incurable inflation.
Analysts and experts have warned that these comprehensive new customs duties warn of the escalation of commercial wars, ignite economic stagnation, and increase the erosion of the public’s confidence in Trump’s dealings with the economy, especially since “American consumers will bear the largest part of customs duties in the form of high prices,” according to Mark Zandy, chief economist in Moodyz Analysis.
Trump said that the new definitions will bring together “trillion and trillions of dollars to reduce our tax and pay our national debt, and all of this will happen very quickly”, but economists and trade experts and other analysts have opposed these expectations.
Trump has stated that the United States may drop its customs fees from other countries if it ends its customs fees, and “began buying American goods with tens of billions of dollars”, but it has not shown any indication of the reversal of its broader protective commercial agenda, despite the existence of warning indicators that it harms its support rates and may harm the Republican Party.
