Dr. Tom McDonnell:

I would completely agree. That is exactly what we should be looking at at a European level. Trump will not be here forever. That does not mean the next President of the United States will not be pro tariffs as well. If the next President is pro tariffs and just as aggressive, then that obviously means we need to rethink. If, however, we are looking at a temporary shock, even if it is for a couple of years, then there is a rationale, at least for a few months as a holding position, for thinking about that type of policy to keep people in jobs. If we are potentially looking at 750,000 job losses at a European level, that is very significant and very damaging to the European economy. It is very damaging to those companies and means the European economy will fall further behind in industrialisation relative to China, for example. There would be further catching up at that point. There is certainly an argument.

Looking more long term, there is also the case that some of these sectors may become less viable if US tariffs are to be more permanent. In that case, we need to really engage with the idea of retraining funds and think about how to protect people. The original idea for this was as a kind of protection against globalisation in some respects, but it was not done in the UK or the USA. Vast swathes of those countries - in the north of the UK and in the Rust Belt in the US - fell into decline because of globalisation and because these type of policies were not in place.