Trump's tariff war is getting results

Donalsd Trump set a deadline of August 1 for all countries to negotiate a trade deal with the United States or continue to face the extraordinarily high tariffs on imported goods he set in April. The fact that a rising number of countries have now done deals suggests that Trump's trade war is beginning to work in his favour. The biggest one so far was with the EU which is now facing a 15 per cent tariff on goods rather than 30 per cent. The best deal so far was for the UK which now faces just ten per cent tariffs on goods. Other countries, including Vietnam, Indonesia and Japan, have all negotiated better deals - but still with Trump winning the day. The huge one, China, is still being negotiated and it's not clear whether Beijing will meet the August 2 deadline, but I expect Trump will give a little on timnetables if he thinks a proper deal is on the way. The result of all this is that the world now knows how Trump does deals. He starts off with ridiculous threats, such as the 145 per cent tariffs for Chinese goods, in order to scare America's trade rivals into a state of panic and then starts to offer concessions over the following few months until foreign governments are so relieved they won't be facing astronimically high tariffs they accept a lower figure even though it's still much higher than the tariff rate before Trump's trade war began. It's not subtle but it seems to work. It could even be argued that Trump has been pretty smart about the whole thing, although what is not often taken into account is that US companies which rely on foreign imports for their businesses are having to pay more. Trump, of course, wants US companies to stop depending on foreign imported goods and buy American. But that's going to take time. But all in all, it's a big MAGA success for the much-maligned president.