the pentagon says it's impossible to know how many civilians died in last year's liberation at the syrian city of raka the amnesty international slams the u.s. led coalition in a new report alleging possible war crimes during the battle for the city. there's fiore in germany after the new u.s. ambassador is accused of lending support to far right groups in europe. maybe he needs to be a little bit more careful this gusting. be you is crossing thoughts with the u.s. of a newly proposed to impose the trade tower of promising countermeasures for the next mile and corner the move by washington illegal. and u.s. senators consider a bill which would greatly expand the president's war powers even those close to

chew tional experts testify about the dangers of the new legislation. my colleague will receive they will be hit next hour with a full rundown of today's news but for now of course talk debates the possibility of a trade war between the u.s. and its global allies. hello and welcome to crossfire for all things are considered i'm peter lavelle faced with frustration and dismay from america's allies even members of the g.o.p. donald trump is sticking to his campaign promise to recast washington's trade relations with the world the reaction has been loud and swift are we on the verge of a global trade war. ross

talking a possible trade war i'm joined by my guest seamounts we're going to there he is a conservative political commentator also in new york we have sarah hsu she's an associate professor of economics at the state university of new york and an exit or we have macleod he is head of research for gold money all right crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciate you let me let me go to sarah first in new york on skype here. it's not hard to find the term trade war in the in the mainstream media of corporate media here are those overblown expectations because i've been looking at a lot of c.e.o.'s reporting on bloomberg and they're keeping their forecasts more or less the same their investment projections moving forward of course they're mindful of this but i sometimes wonder if it's being a bit overblown you know donald trump is a larger than life figure go ahead sara in new york. well right now we're not

entirely sure what's president trying to schooling to you but that the senate he has stated that he's going to implement fifty billion dollars in terrorists and goods imported from china and this is going to result in retaliatory attacks from china china has promised to impose tit for tat terrorists on u.s. goods and this is going to strongly affect both the u.s. and china in terms of consumers and producers and in fact we're already seeing some of the blowback from that. china has stopped purchasing soybeans from the u.s. due to the threats potential trade war and they canceled about sixty three thousand metric tons of soybeans by mid april and they're purchasing a lot more from russia a lot more from brazil and american farmers and michigan and iowa have already been hit really hard ok will you steve here i mean obviously does there is already

brought up the blowback here i mean i guess again if you're going to get into a trade war and you consciously get into a trade war you have to figure you got more punch to the other guy or other a guy because the europeans are furious right now but the big very much coddled over the last seventy years and i'd like to talk about that i think there needs to be a redress of issues there that you say there is issue with china i think is separate but you know donald trump made a campaign promise and he's keeping it for better or worse steve absolutely and you know china and the european union canada mexico that they're separate they're separate issues really in china i think the ultimate goal is that order to bring down the three hundred fifty fifty billion dollars trade deficit that we have with china but also to get them to stop stealing our intellectual property and treat us more fairly in that respect so i think that's part of a grand scheme plus is. political considerations beyond trade and economics that

china plays into as far as canada and mexico especially canada there and the european union they're really ticked off that trump is using the pretext of national security to implement these tariffs on aluminum and seal in particular and that's taking them off no end trudeau has been very outspoken about that but i think when push comes to shove they need us more than we need them they know that trump is a grand master at bargaining in negotiations and this is all part of it i believe ok we'll get close steve we'll go back to that but i. think it on the whole you're right but i think the u.s. in the trumpet ministration is underestimating the options others have in the world are limited exit or i wish to react to some of the things we have said here because there's a very real possibility there could be a real trade war but i don't think we're there yet it depends on how everybody reacts ok in not just two words donald trump is good with words but see about

actions let's go to alistair go ahead yeah i mean i i don't quite buy this story that. you know the trump is really having a go china and all the rest of it i think it is part of a negotiating process and i think we have to bear in mind that there are two things going on in the background firstly we got mid-term elections coming up later this year you had two and secondly the seems to be an ongoing battle within the white house between the established intelligence services it seems to me and donald trump and maybe that the military on his side and so there is a sort of turf war going on which actually is all about geopolitics and i think we've got to look at all this sort of talk about trade wars and all the rest of it in that context as we saw over north korea i mean can get very very aggressive threatening to you know new rocket man and all the rest of it and then the next thing. you know they're talking and they're going to meet in singapore and then

it's off and then it's on again i think the story is going to run and run and run now i'm not actually wildly pessimistic about what trump is is doing i think that there are talks going on which we're not privy to between america trying and also america and russia on trade now when it comes to the e.u. i think that's a slightly different thing because the e.u. is the one protectionist bloc yeah i think america is protections as well but i certainly don't see russia and china being protectionist and this idea that by putting up trade barriers or tariffs that you can reduce your trade deficit that to me is a complete misnomer because the trade deficit is comprised of the excess production of money within the economy and this is why you get the twin deficits effect and

this is why if you get one country turning to save more than the other country you will again tend to get a trade deficit so it's those are where the imbalances start from and i think that's the thing that really needs to be addressed and i just hope that behind all this rhetoric that either donald trump or his advisors actually understand this point and know when to. draw and i'm glad you brought that up because you know i'm going to syria right now is just in that steve said in answer just said here there are so many dimensions to all of this i'm worried about the law of unintended consequences because china isn't a european union there are very very different scenario you want to reach or you want a job in even after steve spoke go ahead i think there's a strong misunderstanding about what a trade deficit is the trade deficit is not necessarily a bad. it's not a win or lose type of situation is. when you have

a trade deficit that means that one country is purchasing more goods from the other country than they are from from the first country and it's not necessarily a bad thing both sides have to have yet to engage in trade and there and the issue with the with china is that they purchase less from the u.s. because the g.d.p. per capita there on average is about ten thousand dollars whereas in the u.s. it's fifty two thousand dollars so as americans we purchase we have a lot more purchasing power and we purchase a lot more from china than they do from us and we when we get good there's no losses there ok let me go about this fever in new york. how much abuse is this political because we already heard them mention the mid terms being mentioned here is this something the donald trump needs to serve up to his base because as we pointed out here is based in the process could be damaged i mean it's a delicate balance isn't it go ahead steve. it's

a very delicate balance when you look at the state so that where the farmers are is and the hurt that they're feeling in many respects and could feel down the road but in that case donald trump is a promise to use federal funding that's available to to to a bailout if you will the farmers who promise that they will not suffer i don't think he needs this politically for the midterms right now i think he's riding on the tax cuts he's looking to make the. individual cuts permanent he's looking to pass that legislation prior to the midterms he's also has the summit coming up june twelfth or eleventh hour time if you will you know if you want to get technical with north korea and he's talking about a summit with putin so i think he has enough accomplishments and he's doing enough things to to to satisfy the base and motivate the base heading into the midterms but this is something i've known donald trump to interview him and to you know and to have a relationship in that respect with him since the early eighty's and then it was

sports but when it matured from sports this is something that has always been on his mind the way we're treated unfairly whether it's in nato whether it's through trade whether it's with bad deals and he what he was he ran on fixing these things he is fixing these things and he's going to fix these things it's one big negotiation and we have yet to see where it will end up we don't know where it will end up you know one day there's no tariffs there's no trade war next day he's going he's putting tariffs on it's all part of a grand scheme he keeps them guessing. ok guys how we all right steve let me go to let me go back to the for a let me go back to sarah but you know it cuts both ways steve ok markets investors don't like unpredictable unstable situations and i think this is the environment we're in and on top of it the kind of rhetoric that's been used against china i don't think is a very good negotiating strategy with the chinese. this chinese this is not

how they negotiate this is they see this type of maneuver as a slap in the face and the way china negotiates is five making conciliatory measures going back and forth and this is something that is going to take to actually stonewall our relationship with china and have a really negative impacts it also hasn't helped the stock market every time there's an announcement out tensional trade wars the stock market goes way down and also companies both in china multinationals and china that one way down what was a well. known well probably not only because we've seen the stock market go way down then it went back up ok but this is proving my point steve ok we have these really good extremes going on here the markets are to the stock market is doing very very well everybody knows that but when we made the announcement i think a drop two hundred fifty points again this predictability that's the issue i'm

trying to highlight here and also here what they what two hundred fifty points with all due respect in today's market of twenty five thousand two hundred fifty points is nothing so are you staying home which is where i don't really care although they were already there were action ok we're going to jump in here we'll continue our shouting on the guy thing when he got back after a short break we'll continue our discussion on trade for stay with our team. joining me every thursday on the alex island show and i'll be speaking to guest of the world of politics sports business i'm show business i'll see you there.

radially reinforce rammed earth bricks is what they really are. this more than seventy houses about a hundred and forty people with families living here. it's really a way of forming same as. the sun's coming in and hitting the house and being stored in massive walls. sagebrush is the natural environment here but as we're containing the sewage and and using the plant surface to process the sewage we create our own little way says here.

welcome back across the uk were all things considered i'm peter bell to remind you we're talking about potential trade wars. ok let's go back to alison i want to reach a few words a quote here from jeffrey sachs where very well known economists particularly in eastern europe and russia not for the best reasons i'd like to point out he is described donald trump as isolating america and he declares him a psychopath's trade war how do you react to jeffrey sachs calling the president the united states a psychopath i think psychopath is a bit over the top i mean he is i know he didn't get elected on the basis that he was like the other politicians but he is a politician and. you know he behaves rather like one just maybe

a little bit differently he hasn't spent a lot of time studying the book on the art of diplomacy you know he's got his own way of doing things and i think that's fine with you know we will get used to it is not. a problem i think the other thing is that what we see in the headlines of course you've got a press which you know having been accused of fake news and all the rest of it i mean they're not all that kind to the man they never were they're never on the same page as donald trump to begin with so an awful lot of what we hear i think we've got to take with a bit of a pinch of salt the feeling i get is that there is a lot of communication actually going on between donald trump and president xi and also to me a putin i don't know this for certain but it just this is the way things work you have back channels and so the idea that. this public slanging match if you like you know on the one hand it's going to be ten percent tariffs on twenty five percent

tariffs on something else and then china responding i think this is really for the public if you like and as i said earlier you know we are in coming up to midterm elections that i think is very very important so you've got all this sort of stuff going on but i think at the end of the day. things get sorted out in the background and i'm quite optimistic that this won't degenerate into something really serious i think there are other things that do worry me however that's really over the isolationists stance of america it seems to me that the rest of the world is actually growing quite well without america america will grow well on her own because she's putting in massive budget stimulus and that budget stimulus i think which current which will coincide with china's purchases of raw materials with the way the european union is beginning to take off i think that's going to lead to big inflation prog. down the road now that might if you'd like put an extra spin into

this is if you like trade carrier type thing because it did because this is bound to increase protectionism i think in europe and also possibly in america ok then what is the role of the world trade organization i mean in a again this is western driven the rules were conceived by the west and china did join in a lot of people said took advantage of it that's a different topic and subject and program itself here but it seems to me when we have so many of these large economic blocks or powers squabbling among themselves then the whole point of having the world trade organization is really quite meaningless and what about nafta and why and what about. if if it breaks that happens what kind of relationship is the u.k. going to happen to have with the united states these a b. the european union i mean what i'm saying is that it gets very very complicated there are so many different angles and different dots to connect here and then you

have the largest largest economy in the world and yes it is china in the middle of it all going to. the world trade organization was created based on the presumption that the world was moving towards a system of free trade and the u.s. was leading that if you logical effort and now the u.s. is moving away from it and so you know it has become less relevant in a way particularly for american politics potentially for the u.k. and elsewhere and i don't know that it's necessarily going to be something that people are able to ignore entirely certainly the tariffs that our president is attempting to impose on china as well as other countries will be questioned and possibly rejected by the world trade organization i don't think that it's necessarily going to become a thing of the past the world trade organization that. i think that sound how there

might have to be some reorganization of it either that or the u.s. will have to go through another eighty illogical change again to where it's treaty trade but that's not their direction that we're moving in currently you know a steve you know the united states has a long lineage of protectionist. strategies that presidents have deployed in to grow and industrialized the american economy i mean it's been a big plus being very selective here but you know again there's the historical thing and i mentioned the beginning of the program is that after the second world war germany and japan later south korea were really given really sweetheart deals by the united states to grow their economies for geopolitical reasons of course during the cold war no one denies that but the cold war has been over for a long time and and it's time for the europeans to me that you know in every sense pay their own way ok nato trade and all that i mean i could i understand the logic

of donald trump in doing this here in the united states is very benevolent to these this part of the world because of geopolitical reasons not because we're all by on like each other no it was for good solid geo political reasons but those reasons are evolving and changing and everybody has to pay their way we all know what's happened to the middle class the working middle class in the united states it's it's if it's not suffering it's gone ok that's why trump was elected go ahead steve well i don't know that it's gone i think it was suffering and i think that that's that's one of the reasons out trump was elected but but you're absolutely right and americans are fed up with this scenario that you just portrayed there they realize what we had and why we had it but there's no reason to really have it anymore and what i'm talking about basically and donald trump's terms is that america keeps getting. screwed and gets the short end of the stick whether it is

funding in nato whether it is in trade deals whether it is in funding the united nations no matter what it is or the paris accords that we draft out of it's always the united states that bears the brunt of the burden of the cost when there are other countries that can well afford it and don't pony up with what is their fair share and this is all part of the thinking all part of the the mindset of donald trump and it extends to these trade deals and trade in general and that's why you're seeing what you're seeing and his base loves it and sort of the american people they love it they don't they don't want confrontation but they don't want to get stepped on any more those days are over ok ok i was limited ouster i agree with a lot with steve there sad to say but it wasn't you know if this is not just state to state these sort of corporations and what we saw over the last thirty thirty five years is western companies moving their production outside of the country making huge profits not being repatriated i mean the reason why we have these

policies is not just you know the president has fast track ability who wrote all those bills i'm have a pretty good idea who did it work it wasn't politicians i can't remember the last time any politician actually wrote legislation was always a lobbyist go ahead alister an exit or. do you know absolutely right about lobbyists and i think lobbying is appalling and i'm looking forward to brics it so there's no more lobbying in brussels as far as we're concerned but i just want to sort of go back a little bit and you know i think the sort of concept that germany and japan got sweetheart deals after the war they got financing yes but i don't think we should rubbish the effort the two countries of those two countries their recovery. i mean it was fair that's a very you know and not only that but the big difference the big difference between between germany and. pan and america was germany and japan when they borrowed they

borrowed to invest in production in more efficient production in production which people actually wanted to buy in the case of america they expanded credit really not for production but for excess spending rather like italy today if you like a worse think that not quite as a bad example. so you know in offense i think you know i think i think to sort of you know blame the the germans and the japanese for being successful in the post-war years i think actually misses the whole point on and why but i'm not dismissing hardworking germans and hard working japanese really hard working south koreans i don't i'm not dismissing their ok please so what is right so you're not only. pointing a gun we're rapidly running out of the i'm sorry you want to jump in that's the point of the program go ahead i know that the u.s. is necessarily getting the short end of the stick i mean as you mentioned.

multinationals american multinationals have gone overseas or they've produced in china and other countries or they're at a really low cost at that meet a huge amount of profit in export back to the u.s. and other nations so i don't know that our free trade policies have necessarily been you know against our own interests ok. ok let me let me go to steve you know you're as you know it worked well where. is all of you disagree and that's van tassel i let me go to our sister real quick and then i'll go to steve go ahead ouster. ok now i think the point actually that sarah was making is is right i mean where apple friends made in america no i designed maybe but basically they're made in eastern asia so you know trade is global and if you start trying spanners in the works then basically consumers will pay and the rate of inflation

in america will only increase if don't trump introduce his trade tariffs it's really as simple as that ok steve i'll give you the last word of the program go ahead how is this making america great i was just making america great forty seven because kevin mccarthy the majority leader of the of the house is backing down on. his tactics in the terrace he points to canada for instance and says look at they treat our dairy products look at our winds which can't go in their supermarket shelves so it becomes a matter of pride it becomes a matter of of of being treated fairly the optics of being treated fairly as well a very important here don't overlook that ok well i'm going to end on the note here probably controversial for all of you you know i don't tend to see the united states as a victim in the world very often ok so let's keep that in mind and we'll see where this is going to go we've seen the past trade wars are bad for everyone that's it many thanks and i guess in new york and an exit and thanks to our viewers for watching us here at r.t.

see you next time and remember rostock rules. financials i think i don't buy any i posit if you. think of the five. as a list of my ex in the future. what's possible. i

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