It is just possible, that Donald Trump, the President of the United States of America; a man who has publicly denounced Climate Change as fake, and who has pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement, has implemented a policy which will lead to the slowing down the onset of Climate Change – albeit by accident…

I have often thought that Free Trade is one of the principal factors behind the increasing inequality of modern life.  The ability that modern corporations have to geographically relocate both their manufacturing and financial structures with ease – and yet still be free to transport and sell goods to any market – is the biggest single contributing factor to the ‘race to the bottom‘ in the world today.  The result of which is abundantly clear through recent data: an increase in corporate profits and a decrease in corporate tax.

In the continual fight for ‘growth‘, nations that cannot or will not impose trade barriers, have to find other ways to encourage the creation of jobs within their local economies: some of which include the watering-down or removal of employment rights, the lowering of wages and the erosion of corporate taxes.  Low wages and/ or a lack of employment regulation entices  corporations as it allows them to remain as flexible as possible to the needs of the market – employing or shedding human resources at will.  Likewise, a low-tax regime is appealing to those companies who wish to retain as much of their profits a possible.  With more than 200 nations competing for the same companies – it is logical therefore, that unless all nations choose to stand together, there is only one finish line for this race…  This empowerment of corporations comes then at the expense of a reduction of the influence and power of national governments.

The impact of this is not only socio-economic however, there is a clear impact of this approach on the environment.  The pollution of the earth’s atmosphere caused by the shipping of goods and materials across the globe to and from markets has a dramatic impact, in addition to the pollution of the sea itself.

It is under these conditions that the announcement yesterday that United States of America will be applying trade tariffs to the importation of steel and aluminium from Canada, Mexico and the EU is likely to have far-reaching impacts; not only in the United States of America itself, but across the globe.  The idea behind the move is that the trade tariffs will cause an immediate price rise of imported steel for domestic producers.  Such companies will then face a choice: to bear an increase in production costs from imported steel, or to turn to locally produced steel instead.  (Of course, they could also shift production to another country and then imported the finished goods…) Such quotas have already been implemented for other countries – however in many cases they were removed once a formal quota for the affected imports was adopted (as happened with Brazil).  Either way, this would result in a reduction in the transportation of steel and aluminium to the United States of America; which would theoretically represent a commensurate reduction in pollution.  All of which is positive, but not the end of the story…

Given the immediate and public denouncement of this policy by key diplomats in all three of the impacted regions, it would seem that retaliatory actions are in the wings, and that this may well signal the start of some form of trade war.  With tariffs being levied in the USA on European goods, and tariffs being levied in Europe on American goods – the cost of importing goods will increase for as long as this trade war continues.

In such a scenario, either the markets will be effectively closed to some corporations due to tariffs, or manufacturing and production will have to return to a local level, and the volume of international transportation of finished goods will diminish.  It is possible of course, that this will have a short-term adverse affect on developing economies.  Such economies who rely on large corporations exploiting the workforce  will undoubtedly see a short-term drop in employment as manufacturing moves back to the local markets.  However, the imposition of trade restrictions would mean that anything sold in their local markets would also have to be produced locally – so a market should balance and develop in line with needs of the local economy.  The recreation of local industry would support both an ecological benefit through the reduction of the global transportation of goods, as well as a engendering a positive socio-economic cycle: increasing local production and employment and thus increasing local tax revenues.

I am certain that had anyone proposed (see Epiphanies) returning to local production as a mechanism for re-establishing equality across the globe and for saving the planet – it would have been laughed out of the room.  Any of the multiple Global Summits (G20, G7 etc.) would have thrown the idea out as a crazy suggestion from someone who has no understanding of the modern world.  Yet in this simple act, Donald Trump has unwittingly hit on the one key policy that will undoubtedly unify all nations (and corporations) in their reaction.

This is GENIUS!  Through what appears to be total ignorance, the most anti-Climate Change protagonist may just have saved the planet!

I only hope that someone, at some point will stand up and proclaim loudly that the eradication of Free Trade is a positive thing – if we do not recognise the benefits of this, then we may well be doomed to repeat the same mistakes again.