How Trump’s Trade Wars Missed Malta: Globalisation Wins, Locals Adapt

**Global Trade is Winning Donald Trump’s War on It – And Malta’s Feeling the Ripple**

Valletta’s Grand Harbour, usually buzzing with cargo chatter and the clatter of containers, has become an unlikely barometer for Donald Trump’s global trade wars. While the former US President promised to “make America great again” by slapping tariffs on Chinese steel, European cheese, and anything else that moved, the tiny archipelago of Malta is discovering that globalisation has a stubborn habit of fighting back—and winning.

Walk into any Maltese supermarket this week and you’ll spot the collateral damage: American cranberry juice has quietly disappeared from the shelves of Tower Supermarket in Sliema, replaced by Polish compote; the price of a Kansas-sourced BBQ sauce at Pavi has jumped 18 % since January. Yet the vacuum is being filled faster than it forms. “Customers barely notice,” laughs Claire Gauci, duty manager at Pavi. “They just grab the Sicilian alternative. It’s closer, fresher, and Trump-free.”

It’s a microcosm of a macro-shift. When Trump first fired his tariff salvos in 2018, Malta’s business community trembled. The Malta Chamber of Commerce warned that retaliatory EU duties on US motorcycles and jeans could hurt local distributors of iconic brands like Harley-Davidson and Levi’s. Five years on, the reality is more nuanced: Maltese importers have simply rerouted. Harley’s European hub in Italy now ships directly to Malta, bypassing US surcharges. Levi’s has shifted part of its production to Turkey, sewing “Made in Türkiye” labels that glide through EU customs unhindered. Global trade, it turns out, is hydra-headed; cut one artery, two more sprout.

The shift is cultural as well as commercial. Friday-night karaoke at Footloose in St Julian’s once reverberated to Bruce Springsteen and bourbon-fuelled patriotism. Tonight, the playlist is 70 % Euro-pop and the whiskey is Scotch. “We still play ‘Born in the USA’, but the vibe is different,” says DJ Kurt Darmanin. “People want something that doesn’t come with political baggage.” Even the traditional American Independence Day party at the American University of Malta has been rebranded “International BBQ Day”, attracting twice the crowd with a fusion menu: pulled-pork bao, Korean-Mex tacos, and Cisk beer buckets.

Tourism numbers tell the same story. US visitor arrivals to Malta dropped 6.4 % in 2019 after Trump’s EU travel-ban rhetoric, but the Malta Tourism Authority simply pivoted. Instagram campaigns in Arabic and Japanese pushed niche offerings: diving the Um el-Faroud wreck at Ħaġar Qim, winter wine walks in Rabat. By 2023, American arrivals were still down, yet overall bed-nights were up 11 %, powered by Gulf and East Asian markets. “The world is bigger than one country,” notes MTA CEO Carlo Micallef. “Malta’s selling sunshine and 7,000 years of story-telling; we’re not short of buyers.”

Even Malta’s igaming sector—historically cosy with US tech giants—has diversified. When Trump hinted at a federal online-poker crackdown, operators like Kindred and Betsson accelerated Latin American licences. Today, São Paulo traffic fuels their Balzan servers more than Boston ever did. “We hedged early,” says one C-level executive over espresso at Café Cordina. “Now Trump’s threats feel like yesterday’s tweetstorm.”

Yet the war is not cost-free. Local start-ups trying to import US microchips for blockchain hardware still face volatile duties. University of Malta engineering student Maria Elena Vella postponed her drone-lights startup after silicon prices spiked 22 %. “I ended up sourcing from the Netherlands,” she sighs. “Better than waiting for Washington to calm down.”

Still, the consensus on the Maltese street is that globalisation’s arteries are too intricate for any one politician to sever. At the Birgu Sunday market, hawkers sell Ghana-style wax-print shirts sewn in India, priced in euro but haggled in Maltese Arabic. A retired dockworker, Ġanni Camilleri, sums it up between sips of Kinnie: “Trump wanted to build walls. We’ve been building bastions since 1530. Guess what? Ships still sail in.”

As another cruise liner—registered in Panama, crewed by Filipinos, financed in London—glides past Fort St Angelo, the message is clear: trade routes are not mere policy lines on a Washington desk; they are living currents, swirling around every limestone corner of Malta. Trump declared war, but the Mediterranean keeps doing what it has done for millennia: adapt, absorb, and sail on.