Analysis: Trump’s tariffs disrupt world trade without a clear strategy

With the Trump Revolution spreading across Washington in recent weeks, its most crucial feature is its burning out, disappearing, but vanishing recklessness. The cost of that approach is clear.

Executives knew that the market would dive and other countries would retaliate when President Trump announced the long-standing “mutual” tariffs. However, when it came close, several senior officials admitted that they only spent a few days considering the possibility of an economic earthquake having a secondary effect.

And the authorities have yet to explain strategies to manage a global system of incredible complexity after the initial shock fades away, besides endless threats and negotiations between the world’s largest economy leaders and everyone else.

Be escalated with China, the world’s second largest economy, and with the only superpower capable of challenging the US economically, technically and militarily. Due to the US and China accounts, there was no substantial conversation between Trump and China’s top leader XI Jinping, or senior aides before plunging into the trade war.

Last Wednesday, the rushed-invented formula to get a grasp of Trump’s national tariffs, imposed a 34% tax on all Chinese products, from all Chinese products, car parts, to iPhones, Walmart shelves and many of Amazon’s apps.

As expected, when Xi met those numbers, Trump issued an ultimatum to reverse the decision within 24 hours. On Wednesday, tariffs fell to 104%, with no visible strategy for de-escalation.

If Trump joins a trade war with China, he should not seek much help from his traditional American allies: Japan, South Korea or the European Union. They are all equally shocked, and while each negotiating with Trump, they don’t seem to be in the mood to help him manage China.

“Donald Trump has launched a global economic war without allies,” wrote Josh Lipsky, an economist with the Atlantic Council, on Tuesday. “That’s why, unlike the previous economic crisis of this century, if the situation begins to unravel, no one will come to save the world economy.”

The global trading system is just one example of the Trump administration tearing something apart, but just to make it clear that there is no plan for how to replace it.

State Department officials knew that eliminating the United States’ top aid agency, the International Development Agency, would inevitably cost lives. However, when a catastrophic earthquake struck central Myanmar late last month, knocking down the building as far away as Bangkok, officials scrambled to provide a small amount of aid.

After demolishing a system that previously responded to major disasters, they settled on sending an investigation team of three employees to examine the wreckage and creating recommendations. All three I was fired from their job They stood among the abandoned in the ancient city of Mandalay, Myanmar, but are trying to revive America’s capabilities, where government efficiency (there are truly no sectors) has become crippled.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not apologise for the slightest American reaction when he spoke with reporters Friday. “There are many other rich countries. “We will continue to play a role, but that balances with all the other benefits we have as a country.”

Similarly, there was no plan to retrieve Maryland men who were illegally deported to the infamous, dangerous Salvador prison, a judge’s move called “completely lawless,” and issues that the Supreme Court is expected to occupy in the coming days. Justice Department attorney for the case I was placed on a management leaveApparently the man should have never been sent to prison.

Trump seemed barely upset as the knock-on effect of his policy took shape. He has recently shrugged a loss of $5 trillion in the value of the American market. On a Sunday night in Air Force 1, he said: “Sometimes you have to take medication to fix something.”

In their public appearances, Trump’s aides often contradict each other, even for reasons to impose tariffs. Peter Navarro, the most enthusiastic advocate of tariffs, repeatedly describes them as new and lasting features of America’s economic defense.

“This is not negotiation,” he wrote in his financial era. “For the United States, it’s a national emergency caused by the trade deficit caused by the equipped system.”

Like Trump, Navarro argues that tariffs are the main source of government revenue, as in the 1890s, before the creation of income taxes. (Skeptics in Navarro’s analysis include Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest person who leads government efficiency and is the world’s wealthiest person. He calls Navarro on social media “really more ridiculous than a fool than a carriage.”)

But when you hear of Treasury Secretary Scott Bescent, who appeared to be struggling because he had to defend his tariff strategy, taxes on imports are a negotiation tool. He said Monday that he oversees such consultations with Japan, the world’s third largest economy and its most important ally in silence of China’s strength. However, it is unclear whether the negotiations are about tariffs, non-regional barriers, or geopolitics.

(It clearly has a tariff exemption to gain a geopolitical advantage. Kevin Hassett, one of Trump’s top economic advisers, told the ABC on Sunday: “There will be ongoing negotiations with Russia and Ukraine. Pay 10%.”

Trump declared that although he would never be pinned down to strategy, all explanations of his tariff objectives would work for him. “Both can be true. There may be permanent tariffs and there are negotiations as there are things that need to be beyond the tariffs.”

What we’ve lacked so far, at least is our vision of the future.

Trump’s aides argue that the speed at which they work is a feature rather than a bug in the system. It was moving too slowly, Musk argued, and the bureaucracy was unable to be delved into. “No one is going to hit a thousand,” he said at the White House in February. “We make mistakes, but we will act quickly to correct the mistakes,” he cited the repair of aid to contain Ebola and the rehiring of workers at the National Nuclear Safety Agency, which oversees nuclear weapons.

However, it is impossible to move through the empty corridors of Ronald Reagan’s building. There, the USAID, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Woodrow Wilson International Scholars Center are all subject to DOGE’s orders to fire many workers. The USAID door is locked. The EPA has stopped collecting some important data. No one knows what’s going on at the Wilson Center. Cold War Archives But most of the scholars are gone. At cybersecurity and infrastructure security agencies, malware surveillance in Russia and China has acquired a back seat to avoid future recruitment.

When the question is whether departments are looking beyond budget lines and thinking first about what will happen when their capabilities and expertise disappear, the answer is defensive. The Department of Health and Human Services has pulled back billions of dollars to monitor Covid-19 and improve response to future virus outbreaks. The department said: “The Covid-19 pandemic is over. HHS will not waste billions of taxpayer dollars in response to a nonexistent pandemic that Americans have been moving for years.”

All this suggests that you can’t miss around the corner. This is almost nothing new to the American presidency. Herbert Hoover signed the Smootholy tariffs in June 1930, and went fishing, believing it would help create jobs. They accelerated the Great Repression instead.

The White House claims this time the outcome will be the opposite. It’s a big bet, and it’s at stake not just the president of Trump, but the fate of the world economy. And no one can predict where the bottom is for the market or where the top is for escalation with China.

“The speed and disruption surrounding President Trump’s policy development has caused extraordinary global economic disruption. No one has seen self-induced volatility on this scale.”

At the beginning of the year, he noted that the US had the strongest economic position among the seven countries’ groups.

Now he concludes that “President Trump has become the main destroyer.”