Trump has shown tariff diplomacy works – we should follow his example

It was tough, robust, and immediate. But it also proved very effective. Within hours of Colombia refusing to take a plane load of illegal immigrants back from the United States President Trump slapped massive tariffs on the country. And what happened? By the end of the day, Colombia had changed its policy. In reality, ‘tariff diplomacy,’ as it should probably be called, works – and here in Europe we should follow the example that America has set.

On Sunday evening, American military planes started ferrying illegal Colombian migrants back to their country of origin. The ordinary person might think that the nation they originally came from was under an obligation to accept them, but Colombia’s far-left President Gustavo Petro saw it differently. He refused the planes the right to land. Under President Biden, that would probably have been the start of a long, tortured negotiations, with human rights lawyers lodging endless appeals in the American courts, and with the United Nations offering to mediate, and perhaps even forming an enquiry to decide, after several years of debate, on who was right and who was wrong.

President Trump saw the problem very differently. He slapped an immediate 25 per cent tariff on Colombian exports to the US – although presumably the white powdery one is exempt for obvious reasons – and said that would rise to 50 per cent by the end of the week. Given that 29 per cent of Colombia’s total exports go to the US, Petro had little choice to back down. The planes will land after all, and the illegal migrants will be going home.

That is surely absolutely right. It is ridiculous that countries don’t take back their own citizens who have illegally entered another country. It means there is no effective sanction, because there is nowhere for the country they have decided to settle in to send them. But Trump’s robust and immediate action has shown there is a way of dealing with that issue. And if the US can use tariffs to impose its will on countries that refuse to accept their citizens back, then why can’t we do the same here in Europe?

After all, we have an even worse problem with illegal migration than the US. By definition, no one knows the real numbers but hundreds of thousands of people arrive in Europe every year with no right to live on the continent. Syria, Morocco, Egypt, and Afghanistan are the main countries they are fleeing from, although there are many others. Often it proves virtually impossible to deport them because countries won’t take them back.

But Trump has shown us there is a very simple solution. The UK is too small to make a real difference by itself. But if we teamed up with the European Union, and imposed an immediate 25 per cent and then 50 per cent tariff on countries flooding Europe with illegal migrants, that would surely prove just as effective on this side of the Atlantic as it has in the Americas. After all, the EU is Egypt’s biggest trade partner, accounting for 28 per cent of its exports, and it will be higher once the UK is included. For Morocco, the figure is 56 per cent. If they were threatened with huge levies, they would have to back down.

Sure, perhaps that is against World Trade Organisation rules. Arguably, it does not respect the trade agreements that are in place, and no doubt the human rights lawyers would argue that it is a breach of international law. And yet, in reality none of that should get in the way. The flood of illegal migration across the world is chaotic, and needs to be stopped somehow. President Trump has just demonstrated that it is possible to rip up the rules and put a better system in place. Here in Europe, we could use tariffs in exactly the same way to finally start enforcing our borders – if only our political leaders were not too timid to even try it.