"Think about it: If the tariffs had the desired effect, why would we still need them seven years after they were first implemented? The answer is, they didn't have the desired effect."

by Ada Zhang

NEW YORK, April 6 (Xinhua) -- The tariffs imposed by the U.S. government will not achieve the desired outcomes and will merely serve to uphold the U.S. dollar's global hegemony, say experts.

David J. Firestein, president and chief executive officer of the George H. W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China Relations, said he was surprised that the administration of former U.S. President Joe Biden didn't lift or significantly reduce some of "the self-destructive and consumer-gouging and job-killing tariffs that were put in place by" President Donald Trump in his first term.

At the recently held 11th Annual Yale U.S.-China Forum, Firestein said that Trump ran the largest trade deficit in U.S. history during his first term despite campaigning on reducing or eliminating it.

"The United States for seven successive years from 2018 to 2024, under Trump and Biden, ran the largest trade deficits with the world that we've ever had in our history, with each year breaking the record of the previous year," Firestein said.

"Think about it: If the tariffs had the desired effect, why would we still need them seven years after they were first implemented? The answer is, they didn't have the desired effect," he said during a panel discussion at the forum.

Speaking at a panel of the forum, Yanis Varoufakis, an economist and Greece's former finance minister, said that the U.S. working class and the middle class bear the brunt of the Trump administration's tariff-centric trading policies.

"There is no such thing as trade wars. What we have are class wars through trade and sanctions," he said.

He called Trump's tariff measures tools to force trading partners to revalue their currencies against the U.S. dollar, describing the strategy as a final attempt to maintain the dollar's global hegemony.

"People in power know that Trump, at the very least, is being honest about one thing: The United States no longer has the industrial capacity to protect itself, not even to build nuclear submarines, let alone high-speed trains," said the economist.

"So, their last-ditch strategy is to maintain the dollar's global hegemony for another 10, 20, or even 30 years, if possible, while simultaneously devaluing it and continuing to extract rents from the system. This is the best they can do," added the economist.

"Trump conceptualizes the world as a bicycle wheel. In this model, he is the hub at the center ... He doesn't want alliances. Instead, he wants to deal with each country individually," said Varoufakis.

Trump's approach is straightforward: He imposes high tariffs on everyone, said Varoufakis. "He knows that tariffs alone won't achieve his goals, but they serve a different purpose: to force each country to negotiate with him directly."