The Trump administration’s tariff war with China is most often observed through the objective of the economy.
But for many economists, the biggest threat is that Trump’s global commercial gambit will erode the main source of world authority in the United States: long-term geopolitical relations that it has grown over almost a century.
Trump maintains that steep prices will bring manufacturing jobs to the United States for places like China as well as Mexico and Canada. But the experts fear its radical turn of the decades of commercial practices and its advertisements of erratic policy will upset the balance of the world power and leave the United States in a weakened position.
“American domination was based on the center of an incredibly close to alliances, and not based on the unilateral power of the United States,” said Jason Furman, professor of economic policy at Harvard Kennedy School and former president of the Board of Economic Advisers of Obama then.
Since the economy and manufacture of China may have changed in recent decades, the domination of the United States depended to a greater extent on its historical allegiances. The country’s economy has come out of the stronger pandemic recession than many other rich nations and remains a dominant force in technology, innovation and finance. But the economy is also very different from what it was there is a generation, when the United States was more a manufacturing giant, and many are skeptical about Trump’s promise to bring these days.
“Twenty years ago, the United States was sufficiently large compared to any other economy,” said Furman. “Now, we are essentially the same size as China, depending on how you look at it. So this is at the heart of American power.”
After the Second World War, the United States played a key role in creating an international monetary system based on rules. More than 40 nations gathered in Bretton Woods, NH, in 1944 to agree on fixed exchange rates and lower rates, in order to promote global stability and cooperation.
Important figures at the United Nations Monetary Conference in Bretton Woods, NH, come together for a photo on July 3, 1944. From left to right are Camille Gutt from Belgium; Ms. Stepanov of Russia; Henry Morganthau Jr. of the United States; Arthur de Souza Costa from Brazil; and Leslie G. Melville from Australia.
(Abe Fox / Associated Press)
“So that the architect has now demolished everything so quickly … Regardless of what is happening from now on, I think that has already been a very dramatic set of events that has not had a parallel in recent times,” said Jayant, researcher at Iseas-Yusof Ishak Institute who previously been an Economist Principal at the Asian Development Bank.
A World Trade War – or even just a war between the United States and China – would probably undermine efforts to build an international consensus on a variety of non -economic issues, the eradication of global diseases and climate change in the war against drugs.
This could also threaten world peace.
“It is difficult to see how it does not spread more widely on international security,” said Furman. “A world where the United States and China have less mutual interest is a world in which war costs have decreased and the advantages of war have increased.”
Stan Veuger, a principal researcher in Economic Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a reflection group of the center right, described the price deployments of the Trump administration as an “embarrassing implosion of the United States”
“It’s just a injury so stupid and self-inflicted,” he said, noting that the response to Canada was one of anger and disbelief. “You see this most in countries that have always been closest to us.”
“You can’t throw this kind of hissing and expect people to forget them,” he said.
Trump donors reject these concerns, saying that the president is right to try to reduce a commercial imbalance with China, which has long limited its markets to American goods. They also believe that his difficult speech will force countries to negotiate with the United States for professions that will benefit Americans better. But it is not clear if such concessions will materialize; Some business partners have expressed their indignation at Trump’s behavior.
Many American allies expected that Trump’s second term as American president is disruptive after his flow of statements on Ukraine, Europe and trade on the campaign track.
But many have always been amazed by the speed with which his administration has broken with defense policies for several decades.
In February, Trump and Vice-President JD Vance caused shock waves around the world when they publicly reprimanded Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, at a television meeting at the Oval Office, accusing him of being ungrateful of American support.
Vice-president JD Vance, on the right, is expressed with the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, on the left, while President Trump listened to the Oval White House office on February 28 in Washington.
(MysTyslav Chernov / Associated Press)
“You don’t have the cards,” Trump told Zelensky, an American ally whose country is invaded by Russia. “You are playing with the lives of millions of people. You play with the Second World War.”
Some historians emphasize that eight decades of historical alliances will probably not be reversed in a few months.
“The United States will still have strong allies around the world,” said Furman. “But just like economic matter, I do not think that a country of the world will be ready to count on the United States to the same degree.”
If Trump does not reverse the course, the next American president may have trouble canceling the prices.
“Once you started this path, it is difficult to change it,” said Furman. “Companies will have made very, very painful adjustments to understand how to operate in the new world of high prices. It will not be so easy for the next president to come and agree to deposit it. ”
In the short term, said VEUGER, the worst case is that the United States gets another stock market dive, the investment falls from the cliff and that we enter “the most useless recession of living memory”. In the longer term, the United States could lose part of its relative power.
“It probably becomes less central to the Western military alliance,” said Veuger. “You might think that some countries would start to return to China a little in China, certainly for economic relations.”
This week, it appeared that the European Union gives senior officials of phones and laptops before going to the United States due to security problems.
“It is not an ideal place for friends,” said Furman.
We do not yet know where the China Trade War is heading. Last week, the Secretary in the United States of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, distinguished China as “bad players” in world trade. “China is the most unbalanced economy in modern world history,” he told journalists, “and they are the greatest source of American trade problems.”
At the same time, China is trying to take advantage of the American alliances that fail by positioning itself as a stable partner – “shake their hands rather than fists to shake”, as a spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The secretary general of the Vietnam Communist Party in Lam, right, and Chinese President Xi Jinping, on the left, left, after their meeting at the Office of the Central Committee of the Party in Hanoi on Monday.
(Nhac Nguyen / Associated Press)
This week, President Xi Jinping is running in Southeast Asia in order to strengthen economic alliances with countries like Vietnam, Cambodia and Malaysia.
“People are waiting for him to present themselves because they feel not only betrayed, but abandoned by the United States,” said Menon. “The United States is also an important economic partner of this region, but now they feel everything that has changed, and it must start examining the means to protect themselves against a huge loss of income that will come from the United States.”
But while some nations would be driven in a Chinese block, Furman said that he did not expect most seriousness in China.
Rather, he said that Trump’s prices “downed up the fragmentation and the multi-polarity of the world, because there will not be a respectable and dominant alternative to the Chinese approach”.
However, Menon was amazed to see the inversion of the role between China and the United States, especially since Xi stressed the importance of openness and order based on rules and multilateralism.
“You sometimes pinch yourself and say,” Does this China? ” Said menon. “Isn’t that what the United States is supposed to say and do? It is completely changed.”
