By the time Marco Polo toured the Silk route, which connected China and India with Europe, in the thirteenth century, ancient civilizations have already been trading with products such as silk, tea, cinnamon and rice, to honey and horses. Globalization, even in ancient times, opened civilizations to new products, ideas and technologies, thus improving the standard of living worldwide.
President Trump’s tariff plan seems determined to go back time, and nowhere his plan challenges common sense rather than with those same spices as Marco Polo and other innumerable in the ancient world traveled for years to bring to the world.
Let’s take vanilla as an example: about 80% of the US supply comes from Madagascar, one of the few places where it can occur thanks to the approximately 254 centimeters of rain a year and wet temperatures of between 20 and 30 degrees Celsius. The widely discredited formula of President Trump to calculate reciprocal tariff Vanilla, clothing, titanium, cobalt and nickel. According to the World Bank, the 83 million dollars that Madagascar sent to the United States only in Vanilla in 2023 exceeded all US exports to the country. Instead of returning the manufacture to the United States, as Trump’s promoters intend, that tariff probably only increases spices or would force companies to manufacture synthetic ingredients.
Similarly, cinnamon comes from the bark of trees that are grown in Southeast Asian countries such as Sri Lanka, and even if it were possible to cultivate them in the United States, they would be needed between eight and ten years from planting until it could be harvested, says Laura Shumow, executive director of the American Spice Trade Association. However, since the United States buys 3000 million dollars from Sri Lanka, much more than the country can import, Trump imposed a 44 % tariff to Sri Lanka.
“You could find a way in a laboratory or a greenhouse to create the conditions to cultivate a couple of vanilla plants,” says Shumow, “but that will not feed the United States.” According to the asta, there are no less than two dozen spices and plants for generalized use, such as black pepper, nutmeg, ginger and basil, which cannot occur profitably in commercial amounts in the United States.
The Shumow organization was one of the many commercial groups that went to Washington to defend their position against the American commercial representative, Jamieson Greer, last month. The pardon occurred on Wednesday afternoon, the same day the tariffs entered into force, when Trump announced a lower reciprocal tariff, of 10 %, during a 90 -day break to allow countries to negotiate different agreements. However, he raised the Chinese import tariff at 145 % in retaliation for the strictest rates imposed by China.
“In order not to have a commercial deficit with any country, the most obvious way of achieving this is the autarchy (total self -sufficiency), so it would be necessary to go back at the beginning of the Middle Ages,” says Carmen Reinhart, professor at the Kennedy School of Harvard and chief execonomist of the World Bank. “The idea that a zero commercial deficit is reached by eliminating the country balances by country is not in the field of historical experience.”
Beyond the spices, the rare minerals and metals – which from the beginning were exempt from the announced tariffs – even if it were theoretically possible to bring the manufacture of clothing back to the United States instead of importing them from countries such as Vietnam and Bangladesh, it would be economically impractical. The increase in labor costs in manufacturing would almost safely translate into an increase in prices, creating conditions for economic slowdown and an increase in unemployment in other sectors.
“I have nothing against jobs in the American manufacturing sector return to some extent; how could one do it? However, the trajectory is full of counterparts,” says Reinhart. “If two jobs are won in the manufacturing sector, four could be lost in the services sector.”
In the last 30 years, the number of jobs in the American manufacturing sector has fallen to its lowest level since before World War II, according to the Office of Labor Statistics. However, that period has coincided with constant economic growth and a high level of employment. The real average family income, adjusted to inflation, has almost doubled, reaching $ 80,000, since 1945. The outsourcing of manufacturing has allowed more Americans to perform more lucrative and less boring or physically demanding professional careers.
In addition, experts fear that tariffs can harm to a greater extent manufacturing jobs that still exist here. Companies such as Boeing, with a value of 67 billion dollars (income), which assembles aircraft in a factory in Everett, Washington, which covers 98 Acres, the largest building in the world, buy components of foreign suppliers, and the increase in the costs of those pieces due to tariffs would limit their ability to invest in more workers.
“Most of the trade is done in pieces and components, not in final goods. That is where the argument that tariffs will bring jobs back to the United States does not really work,” says Nina Pavcnik, economy professor specialized in international trade and interim dean dean of arts and sciences in Dartmouth.
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Trump tariff pause offers relief to cinnamon and vanilla lovers, while globalization receives a respite
In his publication in Truth Social, where he announced the 90 -day break, Trump congratulated himself by stating that more than 75 countries have shown interest in negotiating more favorable trade agreements for the United States and have not taken reprisals. However, other restrictions are likely to influence their relaxed posture. The yields of the bonds rose, which indicated expectations of greater inflation despite the fear of a recession, and the Republican politicians lost support and already feared challenges in the primary before the intermediate elections next year, according to Marko Papic, chief strategist and expert in geopolitics of BCA Research.
“Trade and tariffs are almost always the last and least important issue for Americans. He has decided to spend his political capital on an unimportant issue,” Papic said Wednesday morning, before Trump announced the pause. “Although you will vote for President Trump, you didn’t do it to sew your own jeans or reap your own avocados.”
These external forces could continue to soften Trump’s hard line impulses, but Wednesday’s relief of the previous week would only be temporary if Trump intensifies the pressure to see what can intimidate other nations as the end of the pause approaches. After the 9.5% increase of the S&P 500 on Wednesday, the index collapsed 3.5% on Thursday by becoming evident the reality of a growing commercial war with China.
The last time the stock market had profits in a single day greater than Wednesday was on two different occasions in October 2008, and if the story is repeated, darker days are still to come: the market did not play background during the large recession until March 2009. If the market continues in free fall this summer, investors can only expect to not have to pay 10 dollars for a vanilla ice cream to consolidate.
This article was originally published by Forbes Us.
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