Veteran journalist and broadcaster Andrew Neil has slammed President Trump’s economic policies as a ‘load of old b*llocks’, as world leaders scramble to contain the impact of tariffs.
The U.S. President recently imposed a wave of tariffs, including a 10% “baseline” tariff on all imports into the US and a 25% tariff on car imports. The UK has been hit with a 10% baseline tariff.
60 countries will be hit with higher rates of up to 50%, including Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia and Bangladesh. Countries in the European Union face a 20% tariff.
Trump thinks tariffs are a way to boost the economy and a means to protect American workers while reviving manufacturing, despite the evidence showing that it will only serve to hike prices for US consumers while also adversely affecting the U.S. economy.
With other countries retaliating by imposing tariffs on US imports, China announcing retaliatory tariffs of 34%, fears have grown of a trade war with markets plummeting.
In the immediate aftermath of Trump’s announcement of tariffs, $2.5 trillion was wiped off the S&P index, with financial experts predicting a rise in inflation and consumer goods.
Neil told Times Radio that Trump’s economics was “a load of old b*llocks”.
He said: “Let me just tell you, in the last fifty years, this trading system that has done America so badly, in the last 50 years, real per capita incomes in America have risen from $28,000 on average to $70,000 on average that is what real incomes in America have done under this trading system that has supposedly done America so badly.
“And over the past four decades, America’s share of global GDP has stayed at 25% while Europe’s has collapsed, Britain’s has collapsed, China’s has risen, other emerging markets, like Singapore, Japan, Philippines have all risen, while America has held on to a quarter of global GDP over the past four decades.
“Now in what possible universe could you regard that system as being a bad system for America, particularly since America wrote all the rules for that system, no wonder it did well, it designed the rules.”
Neil went on to add: “We’re dealing with somebody in the Oval Office who is totally divorced from economic reality.”
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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