The US presidential election is always of great interest at the global level because of the influence that the world superpower exerts with its foreign policy.

There is, however, even greater interest in the November 5 election due to the prospect of major changes in world trade in the event that the Donald Trump.

With the election race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump tipped in the polls, Trump’s economic agenda has long caused alarm in Brussels and Frankfurt.

Trump has said he will impose 60% horizontal tariff on Chinese goods and up to 20% on products from other countriesincluding European onesto finance the US tax cut. If he is elected and implements these proclamations, world trade will take a hit big shockthe largest since the wave of extreme protectionism of the 1930s.

An intervention on such a scale in international trade will have a negative impact on the European economy, in fact at a time when it is suffering from the recent successive crises, the last of which is that of inflation.

IMF: If Tariffs Escalate, Everyone Will Cost

Its president European Central Bank, Christine Lagardegave the impression of the consequences when asked last week whether a possible return of Trump to the White House would affect growth and inflation in the Eurozone: “Trade is a key driver of economic activity. Any restrictions, uncertainty or barriers to trade are important for an open economy, such as the European one, which is based on both domestic and international trade,” he replied.

From Washington, where she was in recent days for the annual meeting of the IMF and the World Bank, the head of the ECB noted that the US should respect its traditions and continue to support open trade instead of imposing protectionist measures.

On the same wavelength, the International Monetary Fund warned in his latest report on the outlook for the world economy that an escalation of restrictions on international trade would lead to major risks, as well as the risks of raging wars, particularly in the Middle East. Those risks, according to the Fund, have made the risks to the downside clear to growth, which it forecasts will hover at just over 3% over the next five years, a 20-year low.

If the tariffs are escalated, the IMF’s models show “there will be costs for everyone,” said its deputy managing director, Geeta Gopinath, also sending a message to Trump. “GDP will be much lower than we forecast for all countries in the world, there will be pressure on inflation, so that’s not the direction we should be moving,” he added.

Previously, the managing director of the IMF, Kristalina Georgievahad declared, at the opening of the Fund’s annual meeting, that international trade would no longer be the “engine of growth” as it had been in the past, and that the “retaliations” imposed by the countries affected by the protectionist measures would equally hit the countries that impose them.

In addition to the downward impact on GDP that the horizontal tariff increases would have, they would interrupt the downward trajectory of inflation in the US, which in September was running at an annual rate of 2.4%, and therefore would force the country’s central bank (Fed) to maintain very high interest rates for a long time or to increase them, as the managing director of the International Finance Institute, Tim Adams, warned.

Some analysts argue that it is not certain that Trump will implement, if elected, his announcement on tariffs as Europe is prepared to respond with its own countermeasures. They report that Trump had announced tariffs on European goods when he was president, but ultimately stopped short of implementing them when then-European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker threatened EU tariffs on American goods.

Unlike Trump, Kamala Harris is expected to continue the same policy as Joe Biden on international trade, maintaining the tariffs imposed on a range of Chinese products, which Washington considers subsidized, but not proceeding with the imposition of tariffs on European products.