Jeffrey Sachs is a professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his.

(CNN) President Donald Trump fired the first shot in a delusional and destructive trade war: tariffs of 25% on steel and 10% on aluminum. Shares of US Steel jumped 5.75%, about $460 million in market capitalization, but the overall US stock market capitalization fell by more than 1%, around $340 billion.

A few steel companies might benefit a little -- in the short term -- but the United States as a whole, and the world, could suffer enormously from Trump's reckless ignorance.

Jeffrey Sachs

Whatever US steel producers might gain from a trade war would be offset by the losses to steel users and consumers, plus the social costs of protecting uncompetitive jobs. But the blow to the stock market reflects the possibility of something far more dire: a downward spiral to a global trade war in which all countries, including the US, will be deep losers. We have been there before: The trade wars of the early 1930s helped to trigger, then deepen and prolong, the Great Depression.

But don't expect an impulsive and ignorant man like Trump to heed the lessons of economic history, logic of retaliation, and the basics of trade.

His actions are based on three primitive fallacies.

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