President Donald Trump issued a stark warning to the United States’ trading partners on Sunday, calling on global economies to end to all protectionist barriers, or face a new round of retaliatory measures.
As fears mount over a trade war between the world’s largest economy and major trading partners like China and the European Union, Trump renewed his call for “fair trade” that reduced barriers to entry. On Twitter, the president insisted that “all countries’ with protectionist measures must remove those barriers, or be met with “reciprocity” by the U.S.
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Trump’s doubling-down on his protectionist rhetoric comes in the midst of an ongoing fight that has seen retaliatory tariffs slapped on a wide range of goods between the U.S. and its erstwhile economic allies. Last week, markets were roiled by rising tensions between the U.S. and China, which weighed heavily on stocks and sparked fears of an economic downturn.
In the wake of an acrimonious split with NAFTA trading partner Canada earlier this month, the president denounced fair trade as “fool trade” without full reciprocity. Trump’s increasingly trenchant rhetoric has called into question the relationship between the U.S. and many of its closest historical allies.
