Trump Blinks, Signaling Pivotal Shift of Global Power Toward Defiant East
We continue our series on covering the Trump ‘global revolution’ and reordering, with an update as to how things are going, and specifically, the prospects of America’s ‘resurgence’ as some kind of economic and manufacturing powerhouse.
The biggest bellwether in this regard came at the announcement this week that Trump would suddenly be backing off his ‘extreme’ punitive tariff bluff against China.
BREAKING: US Treasury Secretary Bessent says the tariff standoff with China is unsustainable and he expects de-escalation, per Bloomberg. The Dow has extended its gain to +1,000 points on the day.
In an interview Trump walked back from the edge of the cliff, explaining that the tariffs will be ‘substantially’ dropped:
China made a quiet mirror reprisal, at least according to CNN’s sources, rolling back many of its tariffs on US semiconductors with a series of unofficial ‘waivers’:
Chen Shaoling, a manager at Zhengnenliang Supply Chain, an import agency, told CNN that she found out on Thursday that tariffs on eight kinds of integrated circuits, covering most semiconductors except for memory chips, had been waived to zero. The discovery was made during a routine custom clearance for her customers, she added.
In many respect’s Trump’s theater is easy to see through: he has repeatedly claimed that he’s spoken to Xi personally, and that members of Trump’s team are in ‘constant contact’ with Chinese counterparts, which the Chinese themselves have denied. When grilled on this, Trump immediately retreats into deflection: rehearsed tangents on how America used to be great under tariffs, and now the world is taking advantage. What the performances appear to be hiding is Trump’s improvisational approach, wherein no real strategy is employed—rather the simple end goal of subjugating the world to US’ will as a blind pursuit, draped in the flag of the same kind of American exceptionalism which once flourished at a time the country was an actual superpower, rather than the fallen, decrepit hegemon it now represents.
Trump’s tariff push is driven by good intent, but the issue remains Trump’s poor judgment in cobbling together an administration so full of swamp players in key roles so as to again consign himself to a paralytic and ineffective term of office.