April 9, 2025 — At this point, foreign officials and business leaders may be exchanging notes about all the reasons for minimizing the U.S. in their respective plans for seeking future economic and trade stability. With the track record of Trump’s first term and the first 90 days of his return to the White House, it might be a rather simple scouting report: Trump White House is unreliable and not trustworthy, knee-jerk decision making, lacking in strategic thinking, blanket application of tariffs, simplistic approach to global trade issues, inability to distinguish between friend and foe. Much more might be on the list, but these points might appear near the top.
Days of global financial chaos arising from Trump’s announced tariffs resulted in an about-face today as he announced a pause in imposing those hefty tariffs on many countries. Trump Pauses Some Reciprocal Tariffs for 90 Days, Raises China Tariffs to 125%: Live Updates – The New York Times. Senator Ron Johnson, a GOP senator, was quoted as saying, “I still don’t know exactly what his total strategy is”. Pro-Trump Sen. Ron Johnson Makes Stark Admission About Tariffs
Despite the announced 90-day pause in imposing those high-rate tariffs that were announced on April 2nd, the real question is why would any person in a foreign government that was targeted for tariffs take the American president seriously? The initial announcement wreaked havoc on global financial markets, resulting in losses in the trillions. Looking forward, Trump could abruptly change his mind again and not wait 90 days and impose tariffs on some countries that are getting the reprieve.
With a 90-day reprieve for many governments, excluding China from this moratorium, it provides these governments (and businesses) with time to outline and draft economic and trade strategies that might help in the future when Trump decides to impose tariffs. Unlike Washington’s apparent “strategy-free zone”, officials in world capitals might spend the next few days and weeks talking to each other and developing a way forward that reduces the US factor in the economic equation, knowing this will be difficult.
Understandably, foreign businesses and governments will not simply turn away when the U.S. is the biggest market for many of them. Nevertheless, the instability, chaos, and whiplash effect of Trump’s actions as he treats our closest allies as if they are economic enemies either will or has already caused a deep chasm in relations. The level of trust in the U.S., if it still exists, has been diminished significantly.
Given the past week’s on again, off again and who knows when again tariffs situation, Trump’s actions may fuel greater economic and trade cooperation via existing regional trade groupings that do not include the U.S. China’s involvement and influence in both BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and six other countries) and RCEP, Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (ten ASEAN countries plus China, Australia, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand), provide fertile arrangements for governments to explore various ways in which to soften the blow of U.S. tariffs by increasing economic cooperation within these groups.
Other regional trade agreements, such as MERCOSUR (South American countries) and CPTPP (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) that do not include China, may also be pressed to explore and expand ways to avoid the worst impacts of future U.S. tariffs.
The pursuit of improved economic and trade cooperation is already being reported. On April 10th, the South China Morning Post reported that China is increasing its outreach to the European Union and ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations). China seeks to strengthen EU, Asean ties as US trade war escalates | South China Morning Post
While Trump’s closest advisors tout new interest by our trading partners to negotiate, the question to ask is: are the negotiations by our trading partners a way of buying time while they get their economic and trade strategies in order with the rest of the world knowing that the U.S. is no longer reliable and likely to inject continued instability into the world’s trading system. If there is such a thing as malpractice in governance, a head of government who is not exploring ways to retain some semblance of economic and trade security and stability with the rest of the world, excepting the U.S., would seem to be committing malpractice.