WHY AREN’T TRUMPS TARIFFS PRAISED BY ENVIRONMENTALISTS?
We live in a world where printers are cheaper to buy than ink itself. This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, nor do many fragments of our global economy. The UK annually exports 24,000 tonnes of beef and imports 60,000 tonnes. Whilst America on average annually imports 3.01 billion pounds and exports almost the same amount at 2.89 billion pounds. We even send apples from South Africa to England just to be polished, and then fly them back again to be consumed. Transporting a specific product all over the world whilst importing that exact product from all over the world seems ridiculous and reckless, which it is. It is this aspect of the global economy which contributes to the overall amount of carbon released into our atmosphere. Which is roughly 400 Hiroshima atomic bombs going off every single day.
It’s about time we slowed down globalisation and began to criticise all the problems it has created. Yes, it has done the most amazing things. Globalisation has increased the production of goods and services, especially since capitalism introduced itself to the world in England in 1834. As of 2019, poverty is at an all-time low, living standards have never been better and people are living longer and happier lives.
But it is coming at the expense of our environment. And ever since the invention of the internet in 1991, economic globalisation has become more and more rapid. Economic globalisation can be defined as how countries are coming together as one big global economy, making international trade easier. Yet, all of this transportation is reliant on carbon.
Insert Donald Trump:
Trump’s criticism of globalisation has seen him introduce heavy tariffs onto 31 nations, with China copping most of the brunt. This is much to the chagrin of most mainstream media platforms. Overall, these tariffs come to a combined total of US$12 billion. A tariff is a tax on a foreign product, designed to protect domestic producers in an effort to lift local economies. This political theory is also known as protectionism, which can be defined as a push to shield the domestic economy by taxing external imports.
When put into practice, this greatly reduces the amount of importing a nation implements and also reduces the amount of exporting in a rebound effect. Thus, making a nation more self-reliant and self-efficient. If more nations took on this approach, we wouldn’t need to fly products all of the world releasing dangerous amounts of carbon into our thinly layered atmosphere.
Yet I don’t hear the environmentalists backing this idea.
All I hear from most mainstream media is ‘orange man bad’ ‘orange man bad’. We need to seriously look at the positives of protectionism. Environmentalists should be searching for any solution to reduce carbon emissions. Protectionism has the ability to do just that at gigantic levels. If they really care about our environment so much then why not put aside their hatred for Trump and support this theory?