Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack,
He hopes to strengthen the US’ supply chain sovereignty, renegotiate its ties with all countries with a view towards getting them to distance themselves from China, and shape the emerging world order.
Trump’s decision to tariff the entire world to varying extents as revenge for their tariffs against the US has shaken the global economy to its core. Instead of restoring free and fair trade like he claims to want, which would give American companies an advantage, he might inadvertently accelerate regionalization trends and the subsequent division of the world into a collection of trade blocs. Even in that scenario, however, he could still advance the three unstated goals that are responsible for this policy.
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The first is to strengthen the US’ supply chain sovereignty so as to eliminate the leverage that other countries have over it. This might not be pursued solely for the sake of it, but perhaps also as contingency planning, thus hinting at concerns about a major war. The two most likely adversaries are China and Iran, and a hot conflict with either would throw the global economy into turmoil. Trump might therefore want to prioritize reshoring in order for the US to preemptively minimize the consequences.
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The second goal builds upon the first and relates to the US prompting every country to renegotiate their bilateral ties, during which time the US could offer to reduce tariffs in exchange for certain concessions. These could take the form of distancing themselves from China to a degree and gradually replacing it with the US with their top trade partner. Other incentives could also be dangled such as technology-sharing and military deals. The purpose would be to weaken China by chipping away its foreign trade.
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And finally, the last goal is to shape the emerging world order, to which end the US had to speed up the end of the present one by shaking the global economy to its core like Trump just did. Obtaining supply chain sovereignty and replacing China as the top trade partner for as many countries as possible would give the US’ leverage over a sizeable portion of the world. While it’s premature to speculate the ways in which the US could exploit this, it’ll almost certainly be in the context of its systemic rivalry with China.
Even if Trump’s global trade war unintentionally turbocharges regionalization trends and the subsequent division of the world into a collection of trade blocs instead of serving as the unprecedented power play that he expects, the US could still take advantage of this to implement its “Fortress America” policy. This refers to the US restoring its unipolar hegemony over the Western Hemisphere, which would make it strategically autarkic if it receives preferential access to these countries’ resources and markets.
In that event, the US would survive and could even thrive even if it’s pushed out of the Eastern Hemisphere upon losing the major war that it might be planning or if the consequences thereof make that part of the world too dysfunctional for the US to manage, which could lead to the US returning to its 1920s-like isolationism. To be clear, the US is unlikely to voluntarily abandon the Eastern Hemisphere, but it would still make sense to plan for that possibility just in case circumstances compel it to do so.
All in all, Trump’s global trade war is an epochal event that’ll leave a lasting impact on International Relations regardless of its outcome, but it’s too early to say for sure exactly what’ll come from it. The only thing that can be said with any certainty is that Trump has a grand plan in mind even if he doesn’t ultimately achieve any of his goals, the three most likely of which were touched upon in this analysis. In any case, the old era of globalization is now over, but it remains to be seen what’ll replace it and when.
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