Sweeping tariffs have been unleased by Donald Trump, with a flat 10% on all imports from the UK and much higher rates on China, the European Union, India, and Vietnam.
For decades, trade and trade policy has been an economic and political backwater – decidedly boring, seemingly uncontroversial.
Trade was mostly free and getting freer, tariffs were getting lower and lower, and the world was becoming more, not less, globalised.
But alongside those long-term trends, there were some serious consequences.
Mature, developed economies like the UK and US became ever more reliant on cheap imports from China and, in the process, saw their manufacturing sectors shrink.
Large swathes of the rust belt in the US – and much of the Midlands and North of England – were hollowed out.
And to some extent that’s where the story of Donald Trump’s „Liberation Day“ really began – with the notion that free trade and globalisation had a darker side, a side he wants to remedy via tariffs.
