Trump’s trade war will do no good – but neither will going back to the status quo

Please send your letters to letters@independent.co.uk

Your editorial reflects widespread sentiment about the manifold idiosyncrasies of Trump’s economic policy – if policy is the mot juste.

What you neglect to mention is that American economic hegemony was built on decades of ruthless protectionism, exploitation of vulnerable nations (including the UK) and lethally brutish enforcement of its neoliberal fundamentalist theology on other nations – cf Ha-Joon Chang and Naomi Klein. China is following the US’s example and is likely to become the global hegemon, that none can resist, within a generation.

The US’s transition to a services-dominated economy and perpetually mounting national debt came after the abandonment of Bretton Woods and the gold standard made the US the “consumer of last resort” and made the dollar the global reserve currency. These developments had nothing to do with benefiting the whole world and everything to do with instituting American world domination – economically, militarily, diplomatically, politically, culturally – the folly and futility of which becomes more apparent with every passing day.

You are right that “making America great again” is a quixotic mission. You are also right that there can be no return to a golden age. However, simply hoping for a return to the status quo ante is no solution either. What is required is a global equilibration of economic activity, wage rates and skills and freedom of movement of goods, people, services and capital. Nationalism in all its forms is a bad idea. Everything now requires global planning rather than “globalisation” which has been a cover for asocial, amoral seedy barbarism.

Steve Ford
Haydon Bridge

Brexit is tearing Britain apart

I am not a mathematician but if there is now a large majority of the population that wants a second referendum, how will the government “lose the respect of the voters” by calling for one?

Surely it will gain more respect.

Maggie Dyer
Hampstead

Six short years ago, I watched the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games from a TV screen in Buenos Aires where I was living at the time. I was bursting with pride at the show our country was putting on for the world.

Now, living back in London I see a very different, bitterly divided country. One where manufacturing companies are being told to stop spreading fear by Tory MPs. One where a car plant is planning to stop production for a month after Brexit, like we were back in the 1970s. One where a Tory cabinet minister has had a war of words with one of Britain’s most successful retailers, telling it to stop blaming Brexit for its profits being wiped out.

We have schools that are desperately short of money and having to ask parents to put their hands in their pockets to stay afloat. We have a prison system in crisis, with staff going on strike due to terrible conditions. We have more than 100,000 vacancies in the NHS.

Our society has become less tolerant. Boris Johnson is able to stoke up hate against Muslims, egged on by his own editors and his own ecclesiastical supporters like Jacob Rees-Mogg and Zac Goldsmith. Pro-EU Tory MPs are treated as traitors by their own MPs and the tabloid-supporting press, resulting in some getting death threats – this, even after the death of Jo Cox. Meanwhile, the Labour Party has become a cesspit of hate towards Jewish people with some Labour MPs needing personal protection to go to their own party conference.

I want my country back, too. Back to the open, tolerant, economically prosperous one of a few years ago.

But it can happen only if moderates like you leave your parties. You don’t need to be politically homeless. The things you want are what the Lib Dems want. Come and join us before it’s too late.

Chris Key
Address supplied

There are worse things than no deal

The EU needs to take a step back to stop nationalism spreading across the continent.

Brexit revolves around the question: who rules Britain? Whenever this question has been dealt with in the past, the consequences have been seismic. Henry VIII broke from Catholic Europe with no deal; Cromwell, in settling the question of who rules – king or parliament – executed the king with no deal; and now the same question arises again and the same no deal is looming.

However, the question is now pan-European. You don’t have to scratch the surface of Europe very deeply to find widespread resentment at how the EU is seen to be interfering in what are considered to be national matters. The resentment is morphing into a nasty, threatening, kind of nationalism in Poland, Hungary, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, France, and the UK among others. The EU ignores this threat at its peril and an explosion of nationalism could be its only legacy.

To avoid such a catastrophe the EU needs to back off from its vision of a European state, dismantle its legislature and revert to a cooperative commonwealth of Europe based on free trade and mutual agreements.

LJ Atterbury
Pila, Poland

A united Ireland is inevitable

The Northern Ireland unionist community voted by a large margin to Leave (66 per cent). The main unionist party, the DUP, campaigned to leave. The decision to leave gives the UK and EU an exceptionally difficult problem of dealing with the Irish border to solve at the expense of the main issues associated with leaving. A logical solution and outcome of the decision to leave is a unified Ireland. This logical outcome is something the unionist community voted for.

This assumes the nationalist community, which voted by a massive margin to remain, would like to see a united Ireland. However, the main nationalist party in Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein have a united Ireland as their core objective.

Even without a border poll, there is a clear mandate for a united Ireland. Without this, England, Wales and Scotland, 97.2 per cent of the total UK population, use all our negotiating power dealing with the border issue for 2.8 per cent of UK population in Northern Ireland, who have already effectively voted for a united Ireland, which takes the problem away.

S Bolland
Lancaster