Donald's decision to devise what he calls "reciprocal tariffs" could shatter the commitments the United States has made internationally through the World Trade Organization. That would end decades in which the United States has generally abided by the commitments it made internationally and would potentially usher in a new era of corporate uncertainty and global trade wars.
David French, an executive vice president at the National Retail Federation, said that his group supported reducing trade barriers and imbalances, but also that the scale of Donald's undertaking "is massive and will be extremely disruptive to our supply chains."
"It will likely result in higher prices for hardworking American families and will erode household spending power," he said. He mentioned that an index of consumer sentiment continued to decline, "suggesting consumers are alarmed about trade war uncertainty."
In a statement Tuesday, the American Chamber of Commerce to the European Union, which represents U.S. businesses in Europe, said that the tariffs on steel and aluminum would have "a wide-reaching and overwhelmingly negative impact on jobs, prosperity and security on both sides of the Atlantic."
Douglas Irwin, a trade historian at Dartmouth College, said that Mr. Trump's proposed tariffs would be one of the steepest increases in trade taxes in American history, and the largest since the Smoot-Hawley tariff of the 1930s.
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The tariffs the president has threatened to impose on goods from Canada, Mexico and China alone "would constitute a historic event in the annals of U.S. trade policy," he wrote.
The trade proposals - particularly the so-called reciprocal tariffs, which will be based on a list of seemingly subjective criteria - could also be the final blow for an increasingly battered global trading system, led by the World Trade Organization. In a forthcoming essay, Edward Alden and Jennifer Hillman, trade experts at the Council on Foreign Relations, called Donald's proposal "a complete violation of our W.T.O. obligations to keep tariffs within negotiated limits."
"That would put a stake through what remains of the W.T.O. rules," they said.
