Trump’s trade policies are deemed “childish and dangerous” by Jeffrey Sachs, who also warns of a $10 trillion loss in global wealth

Trump’s tariffs have been denounced by renowned US economist Sachs, who also warned of an authoritarian risk and a $10 trillion global wealth loss.

Jeffrey Sachs, a world-renowned economist, has attacked Donald Trump’s tariff approach harshly, calling the US president’s trade policies so “delusional” and immature that even Mickey Mouse would be wise enough to avoid them.

Sachs stated that Trump’s trade policy agenda is still among the worst in history at a panel discussion on the subject of “Protectionism: The End of Globalization” at the 4th Antalya Diplomacy Forum in the Turkish resort city of Antalya.

The United States recently declared “reciprocal tariffs” that will impact trade with almost 100 countries worldwide, including China and Nigeria.

Sachs insisted that excessive government spending that has outpaced national income is to blame for the US trade deficit rather than trade imbalance.

“You’re running a trade deficit with all those stores if you get a credit card, go shopping, and wind up with a sizable credit card debt. If you later accuse every store owner of selling you all those items, it will be odd.

“That is the President of the United States’ level of comprehension. The United States is outspending its national revenue, that’s all. “The government is a major credit card in the United States,” Sachs stated.

To rethink diplomacy and discover answers to important global issues impacting the world, world leaders, including heads of state, scholars, diplomats, youth leaders, and parliamentarians, convened at the forum. “Reclaiming Diplomacy in a Fragmented World” was the theme of the event.

However, Sachs gave a scathing assessment of Trump’s trade plans, claiming that Trump’s conception of trade is so essentially faulty that “he wouldn’t pass a basic economics class.”

He called the president’s obsession with trade imbalances “dangerous and childish.”

Trump’s economic policies have caused a startling $10 trillion decline in global wealth, according to Sachs, who also warned that the US is moving closer to authoritarianism, which is typified by “one-man rule by emergency decree.”

Sachs denied Trump’s claims that other nations are “cheating” the US, claiming that high US government expenditure, not trade, is the true problem.

Sachs claims that Trump’s team rushed to come up with a methodology overnight to apply tariffs on nations as tiny as Lesotho on the basis of the trade imbalance alone.

They came up with some incredibly dumb formula that you wouldn’t accept in a third-week, first-year economics course. It was released from the office of the US Trade Representative. They were likely told, “The boss wants it, so do it overnight,” he claimed.

According to Sachs, the outcome was a list of tariffs determined on a country-by-country basis, which he thought was completely absurd. “This stuff cannot be made up,” he stated. “My country wasn’t a Mickey Mouse country once.” However, this is Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse wouldn’t do this, therefore I’m sorry to him. “This is not as smart as Mickey Mouse,” said the professor from Columbia University.

Trump is being accused by the former Special Adviser to the UN Secretary General, who has long criticized both main US political parties for failing to address inequality, of offering “a pseudo explanation” and “a pseudo remedy” for economic unrest.

He clarified, “What Trump is doing is telling swing states like Michigan and Ohio that it’s the fault of China, Mexico, and Lesotho.”

He also noted that automation, not trade, was the primary cause of the loss of manufacturing jobs in the Midwest of the United States. “Everything is robots now if you go to an automotive plant,” Sachs remarked. “That’s because the assembly line itself became an automated phenomenon, not because the jobs went overseas,” Sachs contended.

Speaking on more general issues facing the world, Sachs voiced concern over Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement and support coal, calling it a “wilful destruction of wellbeing.”

Trump proposed sweeping new tariffs on nearly all trading partners earlier this month, but a week later, following a market decline, he reversed the majority of them. The professor, however, fought against the plan.

Official statistics from US Customs and Border Protection place the daily revenue from the new tariffs at slightly over $260 million, despite Trump’s claims that the US is earning $2 billion.