While more or less famous Hollywood stars parade in a heartfelt appeal against Trump a few days after the television duel between the Republican candidate for the White House and Hillary Clinton, which will decide the next American elections, the trade war between the USA and the rest of the world knows no rest.
It all started with the genius of the two transatlantic trade treaties, the TTP and the TTIP, the first towards the most important countries of the Pacific area whose accession was signed in 2015, with the exception of South Korea and the Philippines , and is awaiting ratification, while the TTIP between the US and the EU has stalled on the shallows of a trade war that vaguely recalls the proud movement of former Brazilian President Lula who, in Quito in 2003, led the other Latam countries to refuse Bush's FTAA, Free Trade Area. A US attempt to turn the "backyard" into a landfill ultimately failed in 2015.
It is useless to hide behind a finger: from the Volkswagen scandal of harmful emissions to the response of the fine to Apple for Irish tax strategies up to the absurd fine requested of Deutsche Bank is almost equal to its stock market capitalization the die is cast. The Americans want to replicate NAFTA, however in a convenient version, towards commercial partners to curb the Chinese advance, when in Asia American trade is just over a third of the value of the Chinese one and the advance in Europe impresses as the vision of the symbolic terracotta army of Qin Shi Huang, the first Chinese emperor found in Xi'an.
But the two candidates for the presidency of the United States who will clash on TV on Monday evening do not have very clear ideas and according to analyzes by the Petersen Institute for International and Economics (PIIE) Trump's program to raise tariffs with China and Mexico destroys made a NAFTA pact that is no longer convenient and from which Mexico has been able to derive great advantages. Advantages which, however, also made it possible to cancel the migratory flows towards the USA and to start a virtuous diversification of its economy by reducing the dependence on oil of the South American brothers.
On international markets, the debate has landed in the trading rooms bringing volatility, destroying value like last Friday "of the witches ... of Deutsche Bank" and the Mexican peso has become the hedging strategy of this electoral campaign. Raising tariffs to China and Mexico as Trump wants according to PIIE will lead to 4 million jobs in the USA and this means dusting off the recessionary specter of 1986. But on the same subject, Clinton's not so drastic policies are not perfectly delineated and convincing .
So good vision and let's enjoy the markets until the end of October because afterwards, whoever wins, they will have to deal with a colossal country like the USA which among the growing social concerns has far more pressing economic and budgetary concerns.
