Donald Trump’s tariffs may sound like an attractive plan to the average American car worker. But a trade war between the US and the rest of the world has the potential to make us all poorer.
The US president will make an announcement today on the types of tariffs his government will slap on the rest of the world.
The assumption is there will be a 20 per cent blanket tariff on all goods entering the US, which nations can then negotiate down from.
If that turns out to be the case, it will hit several Scottish industries hard – our world famous Scotch whisky sector above all others.
Trump fans in the UK like Nigel Farage, who seem to take a perverse delight in talking their own country down, will loudly applaud this lunacy.
But while it might appeal to Trump’s US voters, it will inevitably lead to them being poorer as well.
Far from Making America Great Again, tariffs will simply lead to a global slowdown in trade – and potentially threaten economic growth for a generation.
The blunt reality is we live in an interconnected world where goods and services need to cross borders as smoothly as possible.
Making production more complicated will only pass on higher costs to the consumer and sour international relations. Trump built his fortune on the global free market. He was happy to enrich himself by playing the game of international finance and property.
But his retreat into American protectionism could well bring about an eternal trade war where everybody loses.
Sweetie strife
Scots have suffered through the cost -of-living crisis over the last few years. Inflation has meant that rents and mortgages have gone through the roof.
Just yesterday we had more pain with council tax, water and energy bills rising. And while all these things have been going up, wages have not being growing at the same rate.
When it seemed like things couldn’t get any worse, now it seems that even our Easter eggs are being hit by shrinkflation. It is an outrage that chocolate makers are making their products smaller while charging more.
The vast majority of Scots are looking forward to ripping open their eggs in a couple of weekends’ time. But they will be absolutely scunnered when they see the size of what they have bought on Easter Sunday.
Blair McDougall is right that these firms are treating us like fools. They should not be allowed to make their products smaller without clearly telling punters they are doing so.