For decades, according to tendentical rules World Trade Organisation, the United States systematically faced higher customs tariffs than its main trading partners and much more repressive non-tariff barriers. The consequence is National crisiswhich threatens both our economical well-being and national security.
At the heart of this crisis lies the deficit in trade in goods, which increased to over 1 trillion dollars (PLN 3.8 trillion) per year. The economical models of free trade, which foretell that chronic trade imbalances will always be eliminated by adjusting prices through exchange rates, are completely wrong.
Cumulative trade deficits The United States has carried over 20 trillion dollars (77 trillion zlotys) of American wealth into abroad hands since 1976 — the year in which chronic deficits began. This is over 60% of US GDP in 2024. abroad interests have taken over immense areas of American agricultural land, housing, technology companies, and even parts of our food supply.
The main driving force behind this unilateral trade is the WTO most favoured clause, which requires associate States to apply the lowest customs tariffwhich they offer to 1 country towards all WTO members. American trading partners can keep high, uniform tariffs in all countries — without motivation to negociate fairer terms with the US.
Since 1979, erstwhile the number of jobs in the manufacturing manufacture in the United States has peaked and the Tokyo circular of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade has started crucial tariff reductions on the basis of the highest preferential treatment clause, The United States has lost 6.8 million jobs in the manufacturing industry. Since China's accession to the WTO in 2001, real median weekly earnings in the United States have mostly stagnated — by just over 10% over the full period.
‘The strategy is functionally broken’
Currently, the average U.S. MFN tariff is only 3.3%. In China, it is twice as advanced as 7.5 percent. Thailand and Vietnam oscillate around 10% and India reaches a staggering level of 17 percent. The imbalance extends to cars: the EU charges 4 times higher Customs duties on cars than the U.S. (10 percent for sedan cars) and the basic Chinese import tariff for passenger vehicles is 25 percent.
Even worse is that abroad countries usage Non-tariff weaponsto strangle American exports, unfairly increase their deliveries to the US and barrier off their own markets. These tools include currency manipulation, value added taxation distortions, dumping, export subsidies, state-owned companies, intellectual property theft, discriminatory product standards, quotas, prohibitions, non-transparent licensing systems, burdensome customs procedures, mandates on data location and increasingly the usage of "lawfare" in places specified as the EU to attack the largest American technology companies. Moreover, many abroad competitors operate in workers' and environmental contamination havens that morally and environmentally stain the global scenery from Asia and Africa to Latin America.
Although the WTO technically permits challenges, its The dispute resolution strategy is functionally corrupt — and the consequences were catastrophic. The United States has brought respective loud disputes to the WTO regarding trade in agricultural products — abroad bans on poultry, treated beef and genetically modified crops. In almost all case, the US won. However, these victories did not matter. The EU ban on American hormone-treated beef was contested in 1996, found illegal in 1998 and yet the EU did not abolish it.
The commercial strategy in which we deal with higher customs tariffs, sharper non-tariff barriers and the deficiency of a real way to solve is nothing but a "honourary system" in a planet where there is no honor among fraudsters. That is why America must — and now defend itself.
ANDREW HARNIK / AFPPeter Navarro, April 2025.
"These are not negotiations"
Trump's common tariff doctrine does precisely What the WTO failed to do: draws countries to responsibility. The United States will now be matched by much higher customs tariffs and crushing non-tariff barriers imposed on us by another countries. It's about Justice And no 1 can argue with that.
This isn't a negotiation. For the United States, this is simply a crisis caused by trade deficits which have been caused by a falsified system.
President Trump always listens. But those planet leaders who, after decades of deception, abruptly offer a simplification in tariffs must know 1 thing: It's only the beginning.
We will want to hear from countries specified as Cambodia, Mexico and Vietnam that they will halt allowing China to avoid American customs by transhipping exports through their countries. A much greater threat is the network of non-tariff barriers that proceed to choke American industry. This has to stop, too.
America only wants justice. president Trump is simply charging you the fees you charge us. What's more fair than that?
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