In the go-getting age of the Celtic Tiger a drain clearance company sported a traffic-stopping slogan along the side of its van. “Your crap is our bread and butter,” it declared, as it tootled around Dublin’s mean streets. Though restrained compared to Donald Trump’s vomitous scatology about countries “kissing my ass” and sorting “their sh*t”, the plumber’s slogan encapsulates the essence of the current US trade belligerence against much of the rest of the world (excluding Russia, of course). One person’s self-indulgence is another person’s livelihood.
Citizens around the globe could adopt the slogan to remind the 77.3 million gluttons for punishment in the US who voted for a narcissistic ignoramus to be their president that their choice has personal consequences for them. Despite his climb down on Wednesday a common 10 per cent tariff remains in place as well as 25 per cent levies on cars, steel and aluminium, while Ireland braces itself for his promised excise on pharmaceutical products.
Though the originally announced levies have been paused for 90 days, they continue to pose threats of inflation and unemployment, not just for tiny Lesotho (50 per cent tariff) and Cambodia (49 per cent) but for Americans on their own home turf. Then the penny might eventually drop for voters who ignored Trump’s venality in the voting booth that this man is VERY, VERY BAD for them.
Many diehard Trumpists will be jollied along by his boast that the tariffs are already swelling US coffers by €2 billion a day, and those like Brian Pannebecker, a Michigan car worker who spoke at the White House on “liberation day”, are willing to wait “six months or a year [before] we’re going to see the benefits”. Stock markets may be as jumpy as a jackrabbit but what is most relevant for the majority of Americans is that the price of eggs has dropped.
Trump’s mathematical calculations in determining his tariff rates have as many holes as Dunkin’ Donuts and the data he used was plucked from Walter Mitty’s imagination but as long as egg prices stay down his supporters will obligingly switch to buying American cars and aluminium tinfoil for their hats.
This is where the rest of us can step up. While Eurocrats and EU leaders attempt to balance appeasement with resistance, the bloc’s 448 million people are not so constrained. Unlike Israel’s genocidal onslaught on Gaza, which leaves us feeling powerless, we have the capacity to collectively strike back at Trump’s aggression by redirecting our spending power.
Canadians are already doing this by opting to take their holidays anywhere but in the US. Since Trump announced 25 per cent tariffs on some goods produced by its northern neighbour, the number of Canadians driving over the border has fallen by as much as 45 per cent at some crossing points.
When he announced his 25 per cent charge on foreign car imports, Trump accused the EU of rejecting American vehicle imports. “They don’t take our cars,” he has repeatedly sulked. (Doctor, doctor, I keep seeing Ford Focuses and Tesla swastikars all over the place. Am I going mad?). Trump disparaged Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the White House for not having “the cards”, but he had better watch out because Europe has a good hand to play with its strength in numbers. The EU has about 108 million more inhabitants than the US. That is an awful lot more shoppers.
A former American president urged in his inaugural address: “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” In today’s global village we ought to be asking what we can do for our Continent. In another of his landmark speeches John F Kennedy said: “Ich bin ein Berliner.” Well, we are all Berliners now. And Parisians, Madrilenians, Lisboans, Copenhageners, Dubrovnikers, Stockholmers, Athenians, Bratislavians and Romans.
If the “union” part of the EU is sincerely meant, we should be buying European. Were a critical mass of us to substitute American cars with German, Italian, Spanish and French vehicles, and swap Californian wines for French, Spanish, Portuguese, Austrian, Croatian or Greek labels, and eschew Manhattan’s fashion labels in preference for Milan’s, American voters would soon feel the message in their pockets.
Anti-boycott advocates argue that we must be merciful to American citizens, but the fact is that the majority who voted for Trump knew what they were voting for after he incessantly promised during the campaign to impose tariffs. Did Irish-Americans spare a thought for the auld sod? “They voted for me so I like them,” the great philosopher in the Oval Office cooed in a St Patrick’s Day hymn to himself.
The intention is not to be cruel to Americans. Au contraire, the kindest thing the rest of us can do for them is to hasten this Trumpian ataxia to a conclusion.
But we Irish have a duty of care to our European neighbours too. They fought for us over Brexit and we have more values in common with them than with a country where the death penalty persists, where you can be refused entry for having a Baby Trump meme on your phone, and where citizens’ right to bear arms licenses mass shootings that are being committed on average twice a day, according to a BBC investigation last December.
A staff member in a Dublin store told me last weekend that “almost all of the cosmetics” it sells are American-owned despite the surge of Irish companies producing excellent make-up and skin care products in recent years. Check the bottles in your bathroom. You’ll be surprised to discover the shampoo and conditioner, cleanser and moisturiser you assumed were European are actually owned by American private equity firms and manufacturing corporations.
Should Latvians start buying more Dutch peanut butter, Portuguese more Ukrainian soya beans and the Maltese more from Ireland’s burgeoning perfume market, European identity would be strengthened. The added bonuses would be a dilution of the Starbucks homogeneity of European cities and cleaner air due to shorter transport routes. How sweet to think that Washington’s current cock-o’-the-walk capitalist and “drill, baby, drill” environmental warmonger could go down in history as the accidental catalyst who saved the planet.
Maybe that witty Dublin plumber with the arresting van has already switched to Italian-made components in place of Elon Musk’s Tesla stopcocks. Or should that be swastikocks?
