Jeffrey Sachs, the renowned economist, gave a couple of weeks ago some statements that went unnoticed by the media. During his speech at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum a couple of weeks ago, Sachs launched harsh criticism of President Donald Trump's trade policies, calling them "delusional" and lacking any serious economic foundation. In a forceful speech, full of irony and data, Sachs not only questioned the recent tariff announcement by the U.S. government, but placed it as part of a pattern of irrational policy decisions that, he said, are leading the U.S. to become a "rogue state".

"The set of tariffs that Trump announced last week - and that caused a financial bloodbath - are not coming back. We won't hear those numbers again. They were improvised, absurd, and so basic that you wouldn't accept them in a first-semester, third-week economics class," Sachs told an international audience.

As he explained, the logic behind Trump's trade measures is based on requiring the U.S. to maintain an individual trade balance with each country, as if it were a matter of having balanced accounts with the supermarket or the shoe store. "This is insane. That's why we have a market economy," he insisted.

To illustrate his point, Sachs appealed to sarcasm:

"This is not a - it used to be not a Mickey Mouse country, my country. But this is Mickey Mouse. And I'm sorry, I apologize to Mickey Mouse. He wouldn't do this. Mickey Mouse is smarter than this."

The economist particularly criticized the political use of these protectionist measures, stating that they do not respond to economic but electoral criteria. "Trump is offering a false explanation to Midwestern states that lost manufacturing jobs, largely not because of trade but because of automation. Instead of promoting investment or job retraining policies, he is selling a trade war with China and other countries as a magic bullet," he argued.

Sachs further denounced that the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative drew up a hasty tariff formula based on bilateral balances, without any technical rigor. "They would not pass an economics test. This was done overnight because 'the boss asked for it,'" he ironized.

Beyond trade, the academic also questioned the role of the US as a global power:

"The rest of the world has to say: we are not going to go down the crazy lane. We are going to be responsible, we are going to go to the UN, to the WTO. If we normalize insanity, there is no way out."

Sachs expanded his diagnosis to include inaction in the face of the climate crisis and growing domestic inequality as signs of a leadership that he said has given up on the future. "While the world needs cooperation and long-term vision, the U.S. is going backwards. Trump just signed an executive order to go back to coal. It's a deliberate destruction of welfare," he concluded.

Jeffrey Sachs' full speech took place during a plenary session of the Antalya Diplomacy Forum, held in Turkey, where he shared the stage with international leaders and academics discussing the future of trade, economic nationalism and global governance.