Dice yes, duties no: uncertainty will send the United States in recession. Stefano Feltri: “To reduce Donald Trump’s damage, the only way is to ignore it”

This article on the duties and uncertainty of the markets is published in number 24-25 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until 17 June 2025.

The Italian companies They no longer know how to behave, whatever they do, they are wrong. If you talk to small and medium entrepreneurs of the Italian industrial provinces, you can hear the most accurate story of What does it mean to export to the times of Donald Trump’s duties in the United States: must be adapted the price of the goods taking into account the duties in force, of those announced, the suspended ones that could return, or those that could be in force at the end of the negotiations that the president says he wants to conclude a little with everyone? Nobody knows.

And it is this uncertainty that the United States will send in recession after the summer, when the absolute uncertainty of the first part of the year will translate into Missed investments, frozen exports, prices that will sometimes be too high, sometimes too low for the context in which consumers will have to make their purchase choices.

On May 28, a Federal Court specialized in the international market blocked the duties introduced by Trump April 2: the president cannot use a law designed for emergency issues and specific problems to implement a protectionism directed towards all the countries of the world with the aim of solving not a temporary situation, but change the structure of American international trade very.

The justification of Trump for the duties is that there are criminal gangs and traffickers who besiege the American borders. But it is not clear why, says the Court, the United States government then responds with commercial barriers to goods, not to prejudiced. So canceled duties and companies to be reimbursed for those who have already paid. Indeed no, the duties remain in force, at least for a while, says another Court who in a few hours accepts a request for suspension of the Trump administration. At least remain the time to present defensive memoriesthen they will come deleted againpending further appeal to the Supreme Court that could permanently delete them or restore them.

Provided that in the meantime Trump does not invent some more legal shortcut To change the legal base of its commercial policies. How can you manage a competitive context like this, in which companies must decide whether to raise prices of 10 percent, 50 percent or lower them because American consumers are impoverished by the increases?

Financial markets can adapt In a few seconds To the new information coming from the White House or by the courts, but companies don’t. For this reason it is crucial that at least the institutions of the European Union remain rational and pragmaticwithout chasing Trump on his ground. Adding European duties to American ones would mean penalizing in addition to exporting companies, those that from the United States must import semi -finished products or services necessary for their activitiesand also weigh European consumers of avoidable increases.

As difficult as it seems, the only way to reduce the damage caused by Trump is to try ignore him. There is an American expression translatable as follows: “If you fight with the pig in the mud, you get dirty and he has fun”.

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