To make a fortune in real estate doesn’t necessarily constitute a good training to understand the present world and to be prepared to the tomorrow outside world. Such is the lesson we can learn from the declarations and the first decisions of Donald Trump and his team. His personal ideas regarding women or religion are arousing in his country and outside a strong reproof. They correspond to the choice of a minority of Americans but, to put them into practice, the new president will have to compromise with the very efficient check and balance principles which are the characteristic of American institutions. It is likely that the measures taken at the beginning of his mandate will be progressively amended and the most radical of them will be cleared out. It is not going to be the same for his economic decisions and for his project, America first, in conducting a definitely protectionist policy.

It is the United States which was at the origin of globalization. There are American companies, and first among them, the car industry, which created plants in Europe, after the war, and later which relocated in Mexico production units to supply the American market. It is the big retailers, including Walmart, which chose to get their products from China and the electronic industry which found Chinese subcontractors, first in Shenzhen in the Eighties and later all around the country, to manufacture its products. Until recently, there were very few Chinese companies which exported directly their production in the U.S. Few were those who care about American trade deficit which resulted because it was financed in dollars and all the countries agreed to consider that it was the major international currency. American consumers took benefits of this policy which provided to them the opportunity to have access to diversified products with a good quality and an affordable price. The consequence was that everywhere in the world, except in Germany, industry share in the GDP fell as the number of industrial jobs.

During that time, new activities were taking over with an unprecedented creation of wealth for those who were at their origin, Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook for instance, thanks to the extraordinary development of mass communication which allows, in a borderless world, to get data and to have access to their content. The U.S. was one of the major if not the biggest winner with the globalization of the communications. During the same time, capital circulation was liberalized and Wall Street became the finance hub of the planet. 60% of the transactions are denominated in dollars and American banks took a huge advantage of it, even if their excess were harshly punished during 2007-2008 crisis.

Does Donald Trump imagine he can reverse this trend in trying to isolate his country and in passing unilateral measures? Unfortunately, yes because he has not understood, due to his lack of experience, that his country would be the first looser, along with his fellows countrymen. In the industry, supply chains are less and less nationals. France has relocated the assembly of its cars, equipment manufacturers have followed and the final products are re-imported in their original country. In Germany, it is the opposite. Assembly staid there and components were relocated mainly in its neighbors in Eastern Europe, which explains the gap between our two countries about industrial jobs and trade balance. In a key sector, aeronautics, the internationalization of supply chains became also the rule. Airbus has decided to build an assembly line for the A 320 aircraft in Mobile, Alabama. If components are taxed, the plant which must open in 2018 is condemned. It is the same situation for the production of aircraft engines. Safran and General Electric, for near 50 years, have developed a joint-venture which is founded on sharing production of the components to build the CFM-56 model which is the most popular engine in the world. It relies on the principle that, once produced, the engine can freely be exported to the aircraft assembly line which is not necessary located in the same country that the one where the engine is produced. Here are the principles Donald Trump is fighting against. With custom duties, strategies of companies like GE or Boeing, whose supply chains are located on a global basis, will be thrown into confusion with inestimable consequences. In thinking he protects American jobs, the American president will, on the contrary, generate unemployment. Consumers will not even take any advantage.  Protectionism reduces competition, which is synonym of a better price to quality ratio and deprives them of a greater choice between offered products.

His position is a paradox since the U.S. is not a model as far as free-trade is concerned, if we have in mind, for instance, the Buy American Act and the fact that imports represent less than 10% of the GDP, when in Europe they are superior to 25% in almost every country. But it delivers a regrettable message. Donald Trump proposes a comeback toward a past world we have no reason to be proud about. He ignores, or he pretends to ignore, that his country played an historical role in bringing together people, in encouraging the convergence of their consumption models, in facilitating the globalization of enterprises and markets, which has been, despite crisis and bumps, synonym of growth, social progress and peace. Europe gave a good example and it is now his target when he criticizes its creation and when he gives an awkward support to Theresa May and to the Brexit. Does he want to come back to the logic of the Thirties and we know where it leads us?

Last declarations of Donald Trump circle regarding Europe are also an answer to another preoccupation. U.S. cannot target only Mexico. The “wall case”, at the origin of the cancellation of Mexican president trip to Washington, is extremely serious as the project to tax immediately trade between the two countries. In launching an attack toward Germany and in uttering threats, the new American administration indirectly tries to send a message to Mexico: we have nothing in particular against you but we act against all the countries which put in danger our jobs. It is not quite sure that the message will be understood and will have the expected effect since the relations between the two countries are so close and passionate that it is not riskless.

This policy will generate retaliations and will provoke tensions between countries which are fundamentally and historically allied nations, which share the same values and which defend the same project of society. The only hope is that, inside the European Union, Trump policy contributes to strengthen links, to reinforce relationships between State-members and to incite them to give more steam to their project. In bringing the proof that this policy is the only answer for the future to protect prosperity and peace in the continent, threatened by American initiatives, European states must employ themselves to convince the growing number of citizens who are skeptical. If they don’t, Donald Trump policy, if he follows the same way, and Europe answer, if it is not up to what is at stake, will only produce losers.