Trump delays tariffs on Canada and Mexico for a month

CGTN Europe

CGTN Europe spoke to Chris Southworth, Secretary General of the International Chamber of Commerce, United Kingdom

Transcript

00:00Let's get some more analysis on the tariffs with Chris Southworth, who is

00:04Secretary-General of the International Chamber of Commerce here in the United

00:07Kingdom. Welcome Chris, thanks for joining us. So with the US tariffs on

00:11Canada and Mexico paused for now, how do you see this playing out and what can

00:17businesses do to prepare? Yeah, if I can make sort of four key points here,

00:21especially with China, it's just to stress the importance of the World Trade

00:26Organization. It's the rules of the road for trade. It's vital to us all in terms

00:31of just making sure that the system is fair and benefits everybody. The issue of

00:35course here is that Donald Trump, US have imposed 10% tariffs, but China is doing

00:42the right thing by following the rules and lodging a complaint through the

00:48proper channels and supporting the WTO in the process and also not over

00:52retaliating, which is really important. Let's be clear, the US is breaking the

00:57global trade rules. We have to be clear about that. The big question actually is

01:02what the rest of the world do or the international community do about it and

01:06China is obviously in the hot seat at the moment, but also a whole range of

01:11other countries are also being impacted here, whether it's Canada, Mexico, EU is

01:16in the frame, India is in the frame, UK is in the frame. We've all been named or

01:22part of the conversation. Just to pick up on that point about the WTO, the UK of

01:27course is a strategic partner. What role can it actually play? What kind of teeth

01:32does it have to address trade disputes? Well I think it has multiple aspects to

01:37it. So it is the rules of the road. Without the WTO, the world is chaos. It's

01:42just a total free-for-all. It's the one place, the one international body that's

01:46responsible for keeping the system structured, orderly, so we all know what

01:53to do. It's really, really important. That's the place to come to in order to

01:58make sure that trade works for everybody and it really matters for almost

02:03everybody in the world. The US of course is a big domestic economy as well, so

02:07it's big enough to do what it wants to do in many ways, but it's not big enough

02:13anymore. It doesn't have the market power to dismantle trade. It can be

02:20disruptive, but it can't dismantle the trading system and that's really

02:24important in terms of the countries that are active in the World Trade

02:28Organization community to make sure that the trading system continues to work for

02:32everybody, progress is not derailed and also don't forget Trump is coming in

02:37this time into a world that's much better organized since the last time.

02:43There are completely different power players, different power brokers and all

02:49of them are working much more intensively than people think in terms

02:54of preparation and how to deal with the issues that they're facing. And focusing

02:58on this part of the world, if US tariffs are imposed, especially on the European

03:03Union, what kind of impact would that have on UK businesses? UK of course

03:08outside the EU and if it is exempt from tariffs could that be a really good

03:12thing for British firms? Could they benefit from that and does the UK have

03:16any leverage now? Well nobody wins from a trade war or a tariff war, let's be really

03:22clear about that. If the US imposed tariffs on Europe that's 40% of our

03:27trade is with Europe, of course it will impact the UK. Where the UK is

03:31interesting is in the sense it's not part of the big power blocks anymore

03:35whether it's the EU or anywhere else. There's no reason at all why the

03:42UK and US should be in a tariff war. We have a lot of common ground, we're big

03:48services economies, so tariffs aren't really important to our economies in the

03:53grandest sense. There's a lot of opportunity and what we're trying to say

03:58is let's focus on the big economic opportunities, let's not get into a

04:02tariff war, that doesn't make sense to anybody and we'll all get damaged if we

04:06do. If you look at it from a US perspective, a tariff war will hurt the

04:12US, it will hurt consumers, it will hurt US businesses. The poorest will get hit

04:18the hardest and small businesses will also get hit the hardest. I think what's

04:22interesting about a lot of this is the poorest are much of Trump's voter base.

04:27How much tolerance and patience they have for a tariff war will be really

04:32interesting to watch, but I suspect it won't be very long before his own

04:38voter base starts to impose pressure on him to say enough's enough, because

04:44ultimately it's an increase in prices in the shops and the products you

04:48buy. Exactly, well Chris, really appreciate your input today, thanks so

04:52much. Chris Southworth, Secretary General of the International Chamber of Commerce

04:55United Kingdom.

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