“We’re like the piggy bank that everybody’s robbing,” President Donald Trump said at news during conference of the G7 summit in Canada. “And that ends.” Moreover, Trump said that when it comes to a potential trade battle, “We win that war a thousand times out of a thousand.”
However, details of US overall trade show that 1/3 of the world weapons trade is controlled by America indicating a surplus trade. Probably under pressure from his industrial military complex to have NATO buy more weapons Trump is claiming an unfair trade game from allies. The argument has been that after agreeing to spend 2% of GDP the majority of NATO alliance countries are still spending below that target rate. On closer look the argument of “non-compliant” members is that the total weapons expenditures should include deterrents to war and terrorism by using some of the funds to address the issues that provoke radical groups to emerge.
Trump’s irrational tariffs baffle many economists as they fail to address China’s oversupply of steel or to lower U.S. trade deficits. But the decision is consistent with his rhetoric on the campaign trail, when he invoked Ronald Reagan’s example with no clear understanding of the issue Reagan was addressing at the time. Historically, the United States has stayed out of trade wars but Trump, last week announced that he plans to slap sweeping tariffs on steel and aluminum imports and asserted that” trade wars are good and easy to win.” But of course we all know that any kind of war is neither predictable nor easy to win.
The White House claims that the tariffs are necessary to protect vulnerable American industries and “ultimately their effects won’t be that big of a deal. ”But there’s actually plenty of cause for concern. “Everybody, all economies, will be adversely affected; the only question is how much,” said Michael Froman, who was the United States trade representative under the Obama administration.”
Rather than accepting the need to meet their own commitments to spend more in terms of military hardware NATO members highlight the importance of the contributions European nations make to security and addressing many of the issues that foment violence and terrorism besides what is spent on defense. As an example for the application of these funds is how development spending makes fragile societies resistant against the risks of radicalization and conflict.
Ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger, Chairman of the Munich Security Conference (MSC) ended the last conference with a proposal for a new metric: “the aim to spend 3% of GDP on a combination of crisis prevention, development assistance and defense.” This is just one of the different views in security agendas on both sides of the Atlantic. While the US considers cutting diplomacy and aid to fund more military hardware, “in much of Europe today ‘security’ is understood more in terms of the risks from migration, the socio-economic context of violent extremism, and a need to address root causes by improving regional stability and economic development.” Europeans are divided on the threat from Russia, wary of “America first” stance and in general the rhetoric coming from the Trump administration.
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