Reference News Network, September 15 report: The World Press Syndicate website published an article titled "Global Trade Is Winning the War It Fought Against Trump" on September 10. The author is Daniel Gros, director of the European Policy Research Institute at Bocconi University in Italy. Here is the translation:

After nearly six months of US President Donald Trump openly disregarding World Trade Organization rules and announcing high "reciprocal" tariffs, the global trade system has held up well. No other major economies have followed Trump's approach. According to data from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, world trade increased by about $300 billion in the first half of 2025.

Most people around the world seem to understand that Trump's tariffs are economically unreasonable. Of course, economics is not always the focus: Trump is using tariffs to advance geopolitical goals or vent his personal grievances. This is most evident in the 50% tariff imposed on Brazil, which was a punishment for Brazil suing former President Jair Bolsonaro, who was sued for attempting to stage a Trump-style coup after losing the 2023 election.

But Trump has always viewed tariffs as key to improving the US trade balance. Therefore, his "reciprocal" tariffs were said to reflect the size of the US deficit with each economy. Overall, economists have disputed these claims and warned that tariffs only reduce the overall volume of US trade, including exports and imports. So far, their warnings have been confirmed.

Short-term data currently available is difficult to interpret, as there was a surge in imports at the beginning of the year due to expectations of tariffs. If Trump's view of the impact of tariffs is correct, this "peak" should now have been offset by a decline in imports as traders reduced their inventories. However, the opposite happened: US imports in the first half of 2025 exceeded those of 2024. The monthly goods trade deficit in July reached $103 billion, almost exactly the same as a year earlier. The cumulative trade deficit also widened: this year, the trade deficit increased by about $16 billion compared to the same period last year.

The US import demand has withstood the impact of Trump's tariffs for two obvious reasons: the US economy continues to perform strongly, and the average tariff rate is far lower than the level Trump announced in April. In fact, Trump immediately "suspended" these tariffs. It turns out that this was just the beginning of a series of confusing tariff threats, withdrawals, announcements, suspensions, and vague "agreements" (such as agreements with Japan and the UK), which involved 10% to 15% US tariffs and conditions related to investment and energy.

Given the constant changes in the tariff schedule, it is difficult to have a clear understanding of the US trade policy stance. After all, the Harmonized System of Tariff Classification of the WTO has about 15,000 tariff items, and each of the more than 150 US trade partners could face different tariff rates at any time, meaning there may be over 2 million different fluctuating tariff rates to consider. Therefore, determining the average tariff rate (which must also take into account bilateral imports, another 2 million pieces of information) is not a simple task. However, even with such calculations, it may not reflect the "actual" tariff rates, since it is unclear how much the official tariff rates are applied at the border.

Luckily, despite the gap between declaration and implementation, there is a simple way to determine how strict Trump's trade policy actually is: the ratio of tariff revenue to import value. This ratio represents the average effective tariff being implemented. And for the current US, this ratio is far below the level implied by the White House statements.

According to data from the US International Trade Commission, the US collected $28 billion in tariff revenue in July, which is 10% of its import value ($283 billion). This is an 8 percentage point increase from January, although the increase is unprecedented, the scale is too small to have a strong direct impact on trade flows. Since May, the average tariff of the US on its trade partners has been 9% to 10%, one reason being that about half of the imported goods in the US are still duty-free. In fact, the increase in tariffs has always been relatively manageable. This explains why its impact on US inflation so far has been minimal.

It turns out that so far, Trump has made a lot of noise but delivered little in terms of tariffs. Although the current US trade policy will have a moderate impact on the country's trade flows, as long as other countries around the world continue to avoid following Trump's example and remain committed to open trade, this policy will not change the global trade system. (Translated by Ge Xuele)

Original: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7550248605366485514/

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