1. If there’s any geopolitical logic in the Trump tariffs, this is it: To sustain the fleeting unipolar order and keep “America first,” the US doesn’t need to confront adversaries. It needs to coerce allies. Trump is testing how economic coercion can make *allies* obey. - ThreadSky

yarbatman.bsky.social • 32 days ago

1. If there’s any geopolitical logic in the Trump tariffs, this is it:

To sustain the fleeting unipolar order and keep “America first,” the US doesn’t need to confront adversaries. It needs to coerce allies.

Trump is testing how economic coercion can make *allies* obey.

Comments

bosanka.bsky.social•11 hours ago

He is too dumb for any logic

alectorious.bsky.social•31 days ago

he is accelerating US decline by destroying the balance of trade, connections and obligation that makes the country great - he is making America weak again MAWA

yarbatman.bsky.social•32 days ago

2. US political and business elites increasingly believe that the rules-based order and globalization has served to reduce the hard power gap between the US and its rivals, especially China. This threatens unipolarity.

Biden’s braintrust helped usher in this new consensus!

yarbatman.bsky.social•32 days ago

3. Adam Tooze has written extensively on the striking coherence between the outlooks of the two administrations.

Trump, like Biden, wants to move away from the current international economic order, to put “America first.”
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n21/adam-tooze/great-power-politics

yarbatman.bsky.social•32 days ago

4. As the US seeks to assert its economic sovereignty, other countries will do the same. The resurgent protectionism of the pandemic years was the clear evidence for this.

But the US wants to be more protectionist without sacrificing its mantle as the outright hegemon.

yarbatman.bsky.social•32 days ago

5. What the Trump administration seems to understand is that maintaining a relative advantage over China and other rivals, thereby extending the unipolar moment as long as possible, requires negating any such push for economic sovereignty, especially among allies.

yarbatman.bsky.social•32 days ago

6. In other words, to remain the dominant player in the global economy doesn’t mean confronting China. It’s not clear the US can do much to arrest China’s rise.

The easier path is to ensure that other countries, allies like Canada and Mexico, are essentially fully subjugated.

yarbatman.bsky.social•32 days ago

7. When Trump says Canada should be the “51st state,” it is a statement about erasing sovereignty. Same goes for taking back the Panama Canal, or seizing Greenland.

The message is that for the US to have a free hand to pursue MAGA economics, these countries have to acquiesce.

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