Joshua Kurlantzick, Annabel Richter
In recent weeks, White House economic policy has focused on making deals, keeping truces, or in some cases—like that of Brazil, which President Trump himself seems personally aggrieved at—levying harsh punishments on the world's biggest economies.
For instance, although details remain sketchy and vague, the White House has announced a trade deal with Japan in which the world’s third-largest economy would face either 15 percent or 26.4 percent tariffs, depending on which side you believe. In addition, the White House has claimed that Japan will invest $550 billion in the U.S., claiming at one point that these funds would be controlled by President Trump himself. (Japan disputes that such an investment will be set up at all.) Meanwhile, Trump gave a recent announcement that any final decision between Washington and Beijing on tariff rates on Chinese goods would be delayed—yet again—for a period of 90 days, an extension of the two superpowers’ trade truce. And the White House has seemingly established at least the outlines of a trade deal with the European Union, though any final and formal agreement seems far off.
This focus on interactions with economic giants and media coverage of big deals (as well as other major stories, including the deployment of the National Guard to Washington D.C.) has overshadowed another aspect of Trump’s tariffs—that high remaining tariffs on some of the poorest countries in Asia (and other parts of the world like Africa), often with no clear reason, have the potential to completely ruin the economies of these already-impoverished states, most of which have no ability to buy more goods from the United States anyway.
On August 7, for instance, tariffs ranging from ten to forty percent kicked in for some of the poorest states in Southeast Asia and Oceania, affecting Laos, Myanmar, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, and Timor-Leste, among others. (Cambodia, another of the region’s poorest states, barely averted higher tariffs by signing a last minute deal agreeing to 19 percent tariffs on exports to the United States.)
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