Andrew Wilson, who serves as the deputy secretary-general of the International Chamber of Commerce, has now issued a red alert warning to the American public regarding the full-blown trade war President Donald Trump has ignited over the course of the last 24 hours that, in his opinion, serves as the “start” of a catastrophic “downward spiral” for the United States of America.
Wilson’s warning came in a report from the Wall Street Journal, in which he cautions that Trump’s relentless and steep tariffs against Canada and Mexico will almost undoubtedly put the global economy on a catastrophic path to a depression that will rival the severity and despair of the 1930s Great Depression.
“Our deep concern is that this could be the start of a downward spiral that puts us in 1930s trade-war territory,” Wilson says.
In his interview with the Journal, Wilson said that at this current point in time, the chances of such a detrimental depression are a “coin flip,” and the true determining factor here rests almost solely in “whether the U.S. administration is willing to rethink the utility of tariffs.”
As it stands, Donald Trump has slammed both Canada and Mexico with 25 percent tariffs on all goods from their respective countries — a move that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made clear this morning would not bode well for the relationship between the US and our northern neighbor — as well as a cumulative tariff of 20 percent on all goods coming from China.
These tariffs implemented by Trump, in combination with retaliatory tariffs that instantly began to roll in from the countries he has targeted, have sent the stock market sharply plummeting in recent days, resulting in predictions of increasing odds of a full-blown recession coming within the next year.
See the full report from the Wall Street Journal here.
Featured image via Flickr/Gage Skidmore, under Creative Commons license 2.0