We're All In The Blast Zone
What does a week of tariff madness reflect on America's international image
Believe it or not, Donald Trump was the person who got me interested in politics. Like many political observers outside the United States, the Trump presidency between 2017 to 2020 was a weird, chaotic spectacle. Sure, it was alarming to see the President of the United States enact worrying legislation like the Muslim ban, say crazy stuff like Haiti and African nations are “s**thole countries,” or read his tweets that include the word “hamberders.” However, there was a sense of perverse fun watching the reality TV show president do reality TV show stuff. There is an underlying understanding that real lives were hurt, but those living in foreign countries can have a small reprieve that the damage won’t affect us overseas, or across the border.
But now, much like Alabama in a Sharpie-drawn hurricane map, everyone is in the path of destruction, including penguins.
Just in the last week, the entire globe has experienced a whiplash in the financial markets that affects the global economy. Long story short, since Trump’s Liberation Day announcement, global markets jumped off a cliff, ranging from steep falls to recession-level meltdowns. The US market had a sudden spike before losing all that money because of a misleading post on Twitter (X), and then there are allegations of market manipulation when the president tweeted that Wednesday is a “great time to buy” stocks just hours before he lifted most reciprocal tariffs. Throughout the entire week, Trump’s trade war has specifically targeted China, with the US raising 145% tariffs on Beijing, and China raising 125% tariffs on Washington as retaliation. Things are so wild, the Chinese Embassy in the US posted a video clip of famous anti-communist Republican Ronald Reagan bashing tariffs as an economic strategy.
Suffice it to say, the self-harm unleashed by Donald Trump is not 4-dimensional chess; it’s more like Brexit and Liz Truss’s mini-budget mushed together and applied on an international level. Trump’s acts were deliberate and unnecessary, they won’t bring American jobs back, they will cost businesses more, and pass the burden on to consumers. Wall Street economists have agreed that a sharp slowdown is likely, even if the US doesn’t plunge into a recession. Top Federal Reserve official, John Williams, warned Trump’s tariffs could push US inflation to 4% this year, and likely raise unemployment and “considerably” slow economic growth. The only practical justification is that the US president wants to see who is on his side and who are his foes on the international stage, and even that doesn’t make a convincing explanation.
In 80 days, the Trump administration has effectively damaged most, if not all, of America’s soft power and economic strength. There have already been talks of the US dollar losing its spot as a haven for stability, and setting aside the tariff talk, the international impact of Trump’s policies is severe.
For Canada, Trump’s talk of annexing it as the “51st state” and imposing tariffs on one of America’s largest trading partners has sparked anger and nationalism across the country. With the Canadian election coming up on April 28, the Liberals have experienced a seismic turnaround, from immense unpopularity to having an 88% chance of winning the most seats in parliament.
For Europe and Ukraine, comments by both Trump and his Vice President, JD Vance, have forced many European nations to rethink their alliance with America. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s shambolic meeting with Trump and Vance has pushed countries like Germany to spend more on their military budget, while the UK announced a “coalition of the willing” to boost military support for Ukraine if a ceasefire deal was reached. Meanwhile, Trump’s cozy relationship with Putin, as well as diplomatic efforts by special envoy Steve Witkoff, has triggered fears that the US President is openly siding with the Russian aggressor after years of supporting Kyiv.
In the Middle East, the Trump administration is an enigmatic power keg that disorients regional policy. Nobody says dealing with Israel, Iran, and the Houthis is easy work. With Israel changing its objectives in its renewed war in Gaza post-ceasefire deal, it is hard to broker peace between Israelis and Palestinians. However, Trump’s calls for war-torn Gaza to be turned into the “Riviera of the Middle East” is a shockingly bad proposal, even if we are numbed by its ridiculousness and that AI video. With increased attacks on the Houthi Rebels, although it looks good when you are blowing up Houthi leaders and infrastructure, analysts say it has limited success while burning through ammunition, not to mention the ramifications of Jeffery Goldberg’s bombshell leak in the Atlantic. Concerning Iran, the Trump administration has done a better job by organizing and having talks with Tehran officials to denuclearize, even though it is slightly undermined that the last Trump administration had ripped up the Iran deal agreed under Barack Obama’s presidency in 2018.
In the global south, the US’s decision to pause and cancel USAID contracts and missions is hurting millions around the world, if not killing people. From the cancellation of a Republican program launched under the George W. Bush administration that saved millions of lives from AIDS, to firing USAID workers in Myanmar who were assessing what the US could do to help the quake-torn country. Not only has it butchered America’s reputation as an international force for good, but it has also opened Russia and China to assert their influence in international aid, which might not be something that Washington likes to see.
Speaking of China, although it is obvious that the Trump administration wants to exercise an extremely hawkish agenda on Beijing, seeing it in action is something else. Aside from the tariffs, which have led to Chinese nationalists generating AI imagery of MAGA supporters working in factories, JD Vance’s recent comments on a Fox News interview were horrendous. During the sit-down with Fox and Friends, the Vice President said, “We borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture.” Moreover, China is in talks with the EU to team up against “bullying” by the US, amid China’s charm offensive portraying it as a predictable power to skeptical countries in the Indo-Pacific, as well as in Europe.
At the same time, the international reaction to Trump’s foreign and economic policy can be divided into three categories, as reflected through the recent tariff madness.
The first category is the capitulators, which are similar to the big law firms and other institutions within the US that kissed the ring. Or as Trump elegantly put it, “I’m telling you, these countries are calling us up, kissing my ass. They are dying to make a deal. ‘Please, please, Sir, make a deal. I’ll do anything. I’ll do anything, sir.” For example, days after Trump launched reciprocal tariffs on Vietnam, the south-east Asian country folded by offering to drop US tariffs down to zero, before promising to crack down on Chinese shipments to the US through its territory and tighten controls on sensitive exports to China.
The second category is the sit-and-watchers, who would choose not to react and let Trump’s erratic decision-making guide their course. Some particular examples include Hong Kong and the European Union, which both decided not to immediately retaliate with more tariffs. For Hong Kong, Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po suggested on Monday that there are no plans to retaliate against US tariffs. For the EU, it paused on its first tranche of retaliatory tariffs “to give negotiations a chance,” as suggested by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
The third category is the retaliators, which in this case currently only includes China. The Chinese government’s decision to fight back and impose reciprocal tariffs on Trump’s reciprocal tariffs is an understandable move, but it also risks Trump singling them out for punishment. At that point, which is the time this article is published, it creates a flash point for geopolitical and economic conflict, god forbid an actual hot conflict in real life.
Most notably for Americans, not only do foreign countries want to hurt them, but they also want to hurt Trump voters as hard as they can to teach the administration a lesson. In one case, the EU targeted Republican states with different kinds of tariffs to maximize pain. As the New Republic reported, “The European Commission on Wednesday greenlit tariffs of up to 25 percent on cigarettes from Florida, beef from Kansas and Nebraska, chicken from Louisiana, car parts from Michigan, and most importantly, soybeans.”
As the Wall Street Journal phrased it perfectly as a headline: “Trump Is Overturning the World Order That America Built.” What comes in place of that is anyone’s guess, but for now, we are just at the beginning of a reshaped global order.