Barry Soper: Donald Trump's trade war will make America grate again

President Donald Trump speaks in the East Room of the White House. Photo / AP

The penny's finally dropped about what's going on in the blond bomb blast's head. Donald Trump made great play with his slogan make America great again when all along he was meaning make America grate again.

His seemingly ridiculous tariffs on steel and aluminium, scheduled to come into effect at the end of next week, runs the risk of wrecking businesses in his own country who rely on the metal for manufacturing all sorts of things, from beer cans to planes, trains and automobiles.

Conversely, the tariffs from 10 to 25 per cent are likely to depress international prices by metal exporters to the United States looking for other markets to dump their product in. A big producer of the metals is Australia who's now pleading with the White House to think again, using the charms of golfing great Greg Norman to do their bidding for them with the big-hitting President.

Just goes to show how Malcolm Turnbull impressed Trump who made the tariff announcement within days of meeting him just over week ago!

Turnbull's charms seem to have worked, however, with Trump yesterday announcing that Australia would be exempt from the trade tariffs.

New Zealand exports a relatively small amount of both steel and aluminium to the United States which would still have attracted the tariffs.

Maybe we should call in The Don's golfing hero who he's always giving a shout out to, our very own Bob Charles, to make him see sense which of course would be no easy task.

With the ink hardly dry on the papers the 11 countries signed in Chile last Friday, breaking down trade barriers, the deal that Trump pulled America out of, a protectionist move by the world's biggest economy is of concern to a country like ours that sold $8 billion worth of goods and services there in 2016.

There's no indication from the American President that he'll stop at simply raising the metal bar. He shows little concern for the organisation that's in place to ensure global trade is fair and that the agreements put in place in free trade deals are adhered to.

Trump sees the WTO, effectively the Supreme Court of trade, as pro China and anti American and isn't at all worried that protectionist moves by him could lead to a trade war. Trade wars are good, he says, they're easy to win.

True if you're the golfing equivalent of a driver, or one wood, as the United States is, while the rest of the world's left playing with a chipper, meaning the game's in the bag.

But then again Trump could just be the old pro, playing off scratch, already giving exemptions from the metal tariffs to Mexico and Canada if they agree to trade concessions in a renegotiated NAFTA and to other countries if their trade policies are changed to become more favourable to the United States.