LWill Europe remain passive in the face of the dangers posed by Donald Trump's policies for the global economy and stability? Or will it be able to anticipate the upheavals that are looming and invent a sustainable alternative to the forms of free trade practiced since the 1980s, but rejected everywhere at the ballot box?
All countries, as we know, will have to very quickly position themselves in the face of threats of customs barriers raised by the new tenant of the White House. This acceleration of history presents risks, but also the opportunity to reinvent international economic relations that are running out of steam, as long as we understand the specificity of the current moment.
The president-elect's program is, in many ways, a continuation of the platforms adopted by the Republican Party since Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign in 1964, whose objective was always to dismantle Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. According to Donald Trump, the United States was never as rich as under the presidency of William McKinley (from 1897 to 1901), when the federal government, before the creation of the income tax, was reduced to the minimum portion.
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The economist Milton Friedman (1912-2006) had, in his time, made a similar speech: he saw in the establishment of the income tax, in 1913, and its rise in power (with a higher marginal rate of 78% on average from 1930 to 1980) a source of considerable impoverishment. Even if it is unlikely that he will achieve this in the next four years, Donald Trump is considering abolishing it outright.
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In commercial matters too, there are more continuities than we often think. Even if the discourse has evolved, Trumpist mercantilist practices are not so far from those of Ronald Reagan [président de 1981 à 1989] which had, during the 1980s, imposed customs duties of 45% on Japanese motorcycles, 100% on Japanese computers, televisions and electrical tools, as well as 15% on imports of Canadian wood.
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