Trump’s sweeping tariff war may be sold as economic revival, but in reality, it’s a desperate response to America’s fading grip on global power.
Trump has publically proclaimed that the tariffs will reverse decades of “countries taking advantage” of the US, even going so far as to accuse countries like China of stealing from the US for years, claiming that Chinese “unfair trade practices” and “intellectual property theft” were the REAL l reason for its economic rise.
Needless to say, this simplistic narrative overlooks the fact that US corporations, and the US government, willfully sent US manufacturing jobs overseas, particularly to China, as a way to maximize profits by exploiting (at the time) cheap Chinese labor, (dirt cheap) and less strict environmental, labour and safety laws.
I guess they thought it was OK for the Chinese, Vietnamese, and others in Asia to suffer for their benefit.
Unfortunately for the US, such activity inevitably results in transfer of skills, technology and knowledge. What Trump views as “intellectual property theft” is no different from the way the US became an economic powerhouse at the end of the 19th century, when Europe, particularly the United Kingdom and Germany, outsourced manufacturing to the growing United States.
The US use of intellectual property theft is even older, dating back almost to the founding of the Republic in the wake of its rebellion against the British Crown, starting with textile production, and eventually branching out into every part of the Industrial Revolution.
The Chinese, in particular, are extremely clever and capable people, as their ancient history shows. Coming out of a century of humiliation imposed upon them by the collective west, they are quick to understand, and even quicker to improve upon, the concepts and ideas in products they are asked to produce, resulting in their dominance of manufacturing of most modern electronics and machinery.
And what is wrong with that?
Well, pretty much everything, if you are Donald Trump.
Trump’s response, rather than to sit down with China to find a mutually beneficial solution to the trade imbalance, is to burn down the entire house. He has sold the tariffs to the American public as something that will “bring back manufacturing to the US and collect revenues!”
US policy toward China has increasingly become a convenient, politically motivated distraction from deeper and more pressing domestic problems. Personally, I believe action should have been taken years ago, but at this point, it may already be too late. As the old saying goes, “It’s a bit late to shut the barn door—the Chinese economic horse has already bolted.”
In many respects, the US has arrived “a day late and a dollar short” in confronting the consequences of its own over-reliance on China, especially in critical sectors. This wasn’t an unforeseen development—the US government was fully aware of the growing dependency as its supply chains, particularly those built on the “just-in-time” model, became increasingly tied to Chinese industrial output and global logistics.
The COVID-19 pandemic offered a stark warning: American ports were overwhelmed, essential goods were stranded offshore or in containers at dockyards, and the ripple effects reached deep into nearly every sector of the U.S. economy. That should have been a wake-up call.
So why now, years later, is Trump making such a loud issue of a reality that has long been visible? Perhaps it’s political theater. The real crisis is that the U.S. is no longer economically self-sufficient and may not take meaningful action unless forced by the threat of total economic collapse—much like Russia has because of the West, by necessity, turned inward and focused on self-reliance and domestic production.
Hence, the blanket tariffs
But here’s the rub, the imposition of tariffs, especially the back and forth escalation between Washington and Beijing, with Trump’s initial 45% tariffs being met with retaliation, and each side escalating until mutual tariffs were over 125%, resulted in a meltdown the US stock market. Even worse was the disastrous rise in yields for US government bonds, something that will make the refinancing of US national debt far more excruciating.
It looks like Trump was at first forced to suspend the tariffs on pretty much everyone but China in order to stem the rout. At the news, on April 9th, that tariffs were suspended, the stock market rallied in the US, but this was short-lived, with stocks, and the dollar, again falling on April 10th as reality set in.
What is interesting, is that the Chinese have matched US tariffs up to 125%, but now say they will not continue beyond that point. What the Trump administration, and much of western media, misreads as Chinese weakness is anything but. At 125% the tariffs have cut trade between the two countries. The difference is that China produces vital items that the US needs. The US produces luxuries, nice to have, but not even remotely essential. As the Chinese Foreign Ministry said:
“Even if the U.S. continues to impose even higher tariffs, it would no longer have any economic significance and would go down as a joke in the history of world economics,” the Finance Ministry’s statement added. “If the U.S. continues to play a numbers game with tariffs, China will not respond,”
Trump, on the other hand, has been forced to give exemptions for a wide range of electronic devices, from phones to computers and TVs, as well as semiconductors, that simply cannot be produced in the US. The Chinese Foreign ministry responded, saying the move was a:
“small step by U.S. to correct its wrong practice of unilateral ‘reciprocal tariffs’.” Further adding “The bell on a tiger’s neck can only be untied by the person who tied it,“
It simply shows the weakness of the US position. One exacerbated by the fact that the US is only a market for 15% of Chinese exports. Will losing this market hurt? Sure. Will it be fatal? Certainly not. As a Chinese commentator, Victor Gao, put it bluntly when asked about losing the US market “We don’t care, China has been here for 5,000 years. For most of that time, the US has not existed”
What is patently ridiculous to anyone who understands how tariffs work, is Trump’s claim that these tariffs will “bring billions” to the United States. Tariffs are not paid by the manufacturing country, but are taxes imposed on items once they reach the US. They will be paid by the final consumer, in effect being a massive tax hike for working class Americans. This may be a sleight of hand by Trump to exchange tariffs for his promised tax cuts.
When it comes to punishing tariffs—or perhaps more accurately, biting sanctions—they’re really just two sides of the same coin. Let’s not split hairs. As I mentioned in a previous article (one that never saw the light of publication, perhaps too early in predicting what is happening now), the deepening military and economic cooperation between Russia and China spells disaster for what’s left of U.S. hegemony.
With Russian resources and battlefield-tested military tech paired with China’s unmatched capacity for mass production and research, the pendulum of global military superiority is now swinging away from Washington—and fast.
In response, the U.S. is scrambling to build a naval coalition, according to a retired American admiral, just to stand a fighting chance against China’s ever-expanding maritime forces. But it’s not only the high seas where American dominance is eroding—the battlefield extends into space, where China is moving at a breathtaking pace to become the dominant power. And it’s not acting alone. With Russia as a willing partner, the prospect of a two-pronged challenge is no longer hypothetical—it’s already unfolding.
Here’s the kicker: since the collapse of the Soviet Union, America’s allies have largely been more a burden than a benefit. Instead of pulling their weight, they’ve grown complacent under the protective umbrella of U.S. military might, allowing their own defense industries and capabilities to atrophy beyond recognition. The assumption that Washington would always be there to clean up the mess has led to a strategic dead-end.
To make matters worse: the U.S. and its NATO partners still seem to believe that war can be waged with minimal casualties and no domestic disruption. That fantasy might play well in Western think tanks and newsrooms, but it has no basis in the real world. Meanwhile, China and Russia are preparing to counter high-intensity conflict with grim realism—and results.
So yes, that’s why the U.S. is reaching for the blunt instrument of tariffs and sanctions with renewed urgency. They’re not tools of economic policy anymore—they’re acts of desperation. Washington is waking up late to the reality that it’s losing ground across all domains: land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace.
And unless something gives soon, it might find that the rest of the world has already moved on.
Seth Ferris, investigative journalist and political scientist, expert on Middle Eastern affairs
