For US President Donald Trump the duties are a panacea. From the first moment of his second term in the White House, Trump uses the “weapon” of duties “by intensifying the trade war. Today, the Minister of Commerce has given another order to add additional duties of 25% to all steel and aluminum imports from Canada. The US president believes that this is an unmistakable financial tool that can restore America’s construction capacity, restore trade balance, bring money that can help eliminate financial deficit and reduce tax burdens.

As a point, Trump is right that duties can help fulfill many of these promises, if not all of them, CNN comments. When used effectively, duties can help boost production within a country, making foreign goods more expensive. Because the US is a huge and diverse economy that is not as much based on trade as their neighbors, they could use duties to cause serious damage to the economies of other countries without sinking into recession. Revenue from duties could contribute to the compensation for angry by its deficits. But all this sounds great to be true.

The problem with Trump’s plan is that duties cannot achieve all these goals at the same time And this is because his goals are often contradictory.

For example, if duties are a pressure mechanism, they must disappear as soon as the countries consent – which means that there will be no duties for the restoration of the trade balance. If duties are designed to promote America’s construction sector, they cannot also increase revenue to offset the deficits. If Americans switch to products prepared in the US, then who pays duties on foreign products?

So it is likely that Trump’s tariff plan will eventually harm the American economy rather than helping it.