ECONOMICS is known in some quarters as the dismal science and is often presented as an overly complicated set of facts, figures and formulas.

In reality it’s an analysis of the choices that individuals, businesses, governments and nations make to allocate resources and, it must be said, to exert political power. Through it we can analyse the impact of class and the class struggle.

I am not any sort of economist — as I’m sure some reading this will be quick to agree. But even I can see that the trade tariffs that United States President Donald Trump has just slapped on the world are utterly ridiculous.

The tariffs are so bizarre that they have even been applied to countries that do no trade with the US and others that are populated by penguins and seals.

The “geniuses” in the White House have obviously sacked all the people who could have provided the most basic information to enable their boss not to look even more stupid than he already seems to many.

I am certain that very few of the bosses that I have had the “pleasure” of working under in the past would have looked too favourably if I had given them duff information to present in public.

But, as you can imagine, I’m really not that bothered if Trump looks even more pathetic than he is. I’m much more concerned about the tariffs, their impact and what should happen next.

Trump claims, without any real economic evidence, that the tariffs, or import taxes, ranging from between 10 and 49 per cent, will bring factories and jobs back to the US.

The policy includes tariffs as high as 49 per cent on imports from Cambodia, 46 per cent from Vietnam, 34 per cent from China, 24 per cent from Japan and 20 per cent from the European Union.

I’m sorry but I can’t let it go. How do the tiny remote Antarctic outposts populated by penguins and seals, the Heard and McDonald Islands — around 2,485 miles south-west of Australia — get on the list?

Neither has apparently been visited by humans in almost a decade, making it perhaps somewhere we can exile Trump and his mates when this nightmare is over?

Along with the rest of Australia, these two outposts along with the Cocos and Christmas Islands all face 10 per cent taxes.
Norfolk Island — population 2,200 — gets a 29 per cent tariff, so it must be doing something super special given they also don’t trade with the US.

It’s clear that it will be the working class in the US who will suffer most from these taxes. It will inevitably lead to job cuts and higher inflation as those who manage to hang onto their jobs will likely see their wages continue to fall. But it might also lead to job losses elsewhere across the world.

Transnational corporations claim to crave certainty before they invest. Although this appears to my non-economics mind to fly in the face of that much-vaunted entrepreneurial spirit they brag about when it suits.

We’ve seen this caution already. In Oxford where I live the BMW plant quickly announced it was “pausing” exports of the Mini to the US because of the tariffs.

On the upside, this will likely force more countries to take their business elsewhere where you are not left to feel like a street hustler with someone doing you a favour by throwing a few shillings in your direction.

If you don’t want to be treated like a second-class country go elsewhere where life is not a round of seemingly endless chaos. One place might be China — already on some measures the largest economy in the world.

I think the actions of Trump will lead more nations to the conclusion that they should refocus their economies to trade more with each other rather than the US as well as somewhere more stable such as China.

In fact the Wall Street Journal described last week as a “great week” for China with the tariffs strengthening its position across Eurasia.

The Journal warned — because it hates the idea — that the tariffs on places such as Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines have forced these nations into the arms of China.

Meanwhile, poor old Europe is at a complete loss. Its daddy has abandoned it. The US has demonstrated that it doesn’t give a toss about the Nato military alliance. It’s told the Europeans to be grateful that it even acknowledges Europe exists. But, as with Ukraine, their input, other than to serve the hegemon, is not required.

The Financial Times is bizarrely attempting to spin the line that China is about to flood Europe with cheap goods. This piece of complicated yoga asana comes even as Chinese technology far outstrips anything in the West — just one example being a higher-quality and cheaper electric car than anything produced anywhere else that charges up in minutes rather than hours.

Trump, true to form, has deliberately targeted the global South for its audacity in already showing interest in seeking an alternative trading model.

Cambodia has been hit with a massive 49 per cent tariff while Bangladesh and Laos have got 37 per cent and 48 per cent respectively. Nobody should think that these tariffs are anything other than the US attempting to exert its power across the globe. 

The problem is, I think, that the US has grossly underestimated its rivals’ power and the progress countries have already made towards the reorientation of trading arrangements.

Saying that, many of the countries being targeted by Trump have no bargaining power — they are just too small to be in any kind of confrontation with the US.

Even so many countries of the global South hit by Trump had been the beneficiaries of preferential schemes offering low or zero tariffs with the US.

The real fear is that the costs of these extra tariffs will be dumped on those suppliers far down the supply chain — the least able to absorb the costs.

Small farmers or women workers in places like Bangladesh or Sri Lanka, who already find it hard to make ends meet, may be the hardest hit.

Sri Lanka has been hit with a huge 44 per cent tariff, having just been bailed out by the International Monetary Fund — controlled by the US.

The US client states in Africa have rushed to contact the US in the hope that “massa” is willing to do a deal. But they too have misjudged the new winds blowing across the continent. For that one should look at the Alliance of Sahel States which, instead of accommodating the US and its Western subordinates, are busy kicking them out of town.

The Trump tariffs will inevitably go down in history as a monumental economic disaster. But this could also go down as the moment that the global South took a decisive step forward towards its long-hoped-for liberation.