Tariff Isn’t A Dirty Word; Wars With Iran and China Are Inherently Unwinnable
It might have been Saagar Enjeti on Breaking Points or Eliot Dewberry on Internet Today – or maybe someone else entirely, to be frank – who recently said that they could see the word “tariff” becoming a dirty word in US politics for the coming generations; that by 2028, any discussion of tariff policy will be a non-starter at best and a career-ender at worst for any looking to engage in whatever comes next. Based on how the discussion of how things are progressing under the omnipresent shadow of the Trump Trade War unfolding over all our heads, I think that they may be correct, that the use of a trade tool as a hammer against every person in the world may shatter the instrument itself for generations to come.
Tariffs, like sanctions, are a method of redirecting monetary flow from or to a State or chosen industry. They can provide immense value when properly utilized, offer trade protection to a fledgling industrial sector or economic punishment to States which are over-reliant another’s domestic base. Like any informed Leftist, you should know that tariffs are not inherently good or bad, they are a means to an end which can be turned to any purpose by any administration. The key, as with any policy from the Left, is a holistic, intersectional approach.
With no industrial base to speak of, lacking the skilled masses required to not only create end products, but to process, refine, and manufacture base components at all, what good do tariffs serve any average person? That is the fundamental truth which completely undermines the premise that tariffs on consumer goods at home will provide growth for domestic businesses and therefore the average American. Even if investors foolishly bring their money to the US, there is nothing left for them to invest in which isn’t purely fabricated or service-based.
What the Trump Administration is doing in hammering the entire trading (and non-trading) world with universal, “retaliatory” tariffs is abnormal, an aberration and misuse of the tool; it offers nothing to the United States, weakening its position globally and domestically while exposing the woeful misunderstanding of basic economics by the Capitalist leadership. It seems they believe that despite they themselves shipping millions of US jobs to foreign markets in pursuit of perpetual profits, they can simply now extract more through import taxes on the jobless consumer at home. This is the only true outcome of the tariff wars being sparked by our President: profits for businesses and opportunities for oligarchical insider trading.
For years, China has led the world into a fairer trade system through huge investments in soft power capital. Through the creation of BRICS, China and its partners proved that the days of the IMF and US-dominated trade agreements are over, that a nation need not sell the soul of its people to Western companies and US dollars. This is why we do not stand a chance in a trade war with China. Where our international trade policy is based on whims from different Capitalist administrations and their benefactors, China’s is based on a scientific, practiced understanding of how global trade politics work; where we have a stable of supplicant stooges, they have the brightest minds in economics who have trained in the best universities across the world. The likes of speculators like Elon Musk, Peter Navarro, or Scott Bessent are no match for a purpose-built national policy aimed against the antics of them and their ilk.
We have attacked our allies and ideological enemies alike, creating divisions and sowing discord as the opening salvo in an effort to re-foot the United States as a global trade hegemon and not just a consumerist maw. At the end of the day, China’s allies are too many and the US’ are too few; their trade contracts and development under One Belt-One Road are fairer, ours are purely exploitative and backed only by mafia-esque brutism.
This is the world in which the war hawks are screeching from their heights, an environment in which the United States is weakened economically and politically. We are outmatched by China in manufacturing and mobilization, cannot organize even a shadow of the capacity of the largest Nation on the planet. They are focused and immensely capable, reaching the summit of their influence in the global order as ours rapidly wanes in their shadow.
If you think, as these warmongers in power do, that we can bully our way back to the top, you are sorely mistaken and foolish indeed. Look no further than Yemen.
Proving victorious in unseating 22-year dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh Affashn following the Yemeni Intifada of 2011, the emancipatory Ansar Allah (Houthi) Movement has since withstood more than a decade of incursion and relentless bombing by US-proxies from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Bahrain, Qatar, Egypt, and Jordan. Despite it all, the Houthis have built a robust resistance in the region, stunning international shipping and proving themselves effective in countering the asymmetrical combat systems of US Navy ships. In fact, they seem to have turned the tables on the all-powerful hard power systems of the US military. Since enacting their blockade on US-Israeli shipping in the Red Sea, Yemeni forces have incurred more than a $1trillion in military expenditures on the US, downing around two dozen MQ-9 Reaper drones ($30million + ~$500k in armament each) in addition to an entirely unknowable wastage of other weapons, systems, and labor hours, all with largely domestically-manufactured and/or low cost arms and electronics from abroad. Just as we already learned in Ukraine, when a $500 drone can knock a $30,000,000 drone from the sky, the asymmetries may have shifted.
So, what does this mean when we look to the "bigger fish? China, Iran, and Russia? If our proxies cannot quash Gaza or Sana’a or Kursk, if our own military might cannot outmatch those of our “lesser” enemies, what hope do they have against those who have planned for this moment for decades?
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