Trump lashes out at Spain: ‘Cut off all trade.’ Here’s why that’s unlikely to happen
President Trump, venting his longstanding animus toward Europe at the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, singled out Spain with particular spleen on Wednesday.
“I don’t want anything to do with Spain,” he said of the European Union’s fourth-largest economy. “Cut off all trade with Spain, please, including visits.”
“They’re hopeless, bad people,” he added.
Whether Mr. Trump has the desire or the power to follow through on his threat to treat a European ally as a pariah on a par with North Korea remains to be seen. He has often tried to bully other states — including China, Iran, Greenland and Oman — only to back down.
Because Spain is part of the European Union, its foreign trade is governed by the bloc’s deals. The most recent agreement was completed just a few weeks ago — although Mr. Trump has already threatened to violate it by posting on social media that he would impose a 100 percent tariff on countries that levied a digital services tax.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain shrugged off the threat Wednesday afternoon. “Commercial relations are woven between companies, not between governments,” he said.
Olof Gill, a spokesperson for the European Commission, pushed back on behalf of Spain, saying: “We expect the U.S. to honor its commitments under that joint statement, as we have honored ours.”
He added, “The commission will always ensure that the interests of the European Union and all our member states are fully protected.”
If Mr. Trump were to follow through on his threats to Spain, “he would be targeting all of the E.U., and that, of course, would lead to a trade war,” said Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at Bruegel, a think tank in Brussels.
Mr. Kirkegaard was skeptical of the president’s ability to enact the kind of sweeping restrictions that he promised.
“This is sort of Trump aggressively lashing out at some level, trying to shift attention away from what’s going on right now in the Middle East,” he said. “But does he have a legal vehicle to make the actual legal changes that he is articulating? Yeah, I think the answer to that question is very clearly no.”
As for tariffs, the U.S. Supreme Court in February curbed the president’s ability to impose duties on countries willy-nilly.
Mr. Kirkegaard added that Mr. Trump would most likely be deterred by the reaction of financial markets, which could look askance at a resumption of a trade war with Europe. Mr. Trump has often shown he is willing to back down when markets recoil from his policies. [Continue reading…]
Sanchez’s office said in a statement it was treating Trump’s statements as “business as usual” and did not intend to change the “excellent” relations it enjoyed with Washington.
It pointed out that Spain had a trade deficit with the U.S. and that economic ties were forged by private companies rather than governments, adding that as part of the customs and trade union, individual EU members could not be singled out.
Washington jointly operates with Madrid two key military bases in southern Spain for naval and air operations.
Asked whether Spain has contingency plans in case the U.S reduces forces or assets at the bases, Spanish officials this week said there was no indication that such a plan was underway, with investment in both bases growing. [Continue reading…]