Trump's Economic War on America, Canada, Mexico, European Union, and China

The combat of WAR and an economic WAR have a lot of similarities. You do have to be skilled, aggressive, know your enemy and your strong attributes and limitations. Both skills are needed although one may be more natural. ~ Richard Marcinko

To me, the economic war with China is everything. And we have to be maniacally focused on that. If we continue to lose it, we're five years away, I think, ten years at the most, of hitting an inflection point from which we'll never be able to recover. ~ Stephen K. Bannon

Europe is war. Economic war. It is the increase of hostilities between the countries. Germans are denigrated as being cruel, the Greeks as fraudsters, the French as lazy. Ms. Merkel can't travel to any European country without being protected by hundreds of police. That is not brotherhood. ~ Marine Le Pen

We've turned the post-war economy that made America prosperous and rich inside out. Somehow most people believed they could get rich by going into debt to borrow assets that were going to rise in price. But you can't get rich, ultimately, by going into debt. In the end the creditors always win. ~ Michael Hudson

Power is a force that must be wielded carefully. Mislaid, it becomes a double-edged sword, hurtful to adversaries and to the wielder too. In a bid to try to take the reins of global trade back from China, the Trump administration enforced blanket tariffs: 25% on Canada, Mexico, and the European Union, and 20% on China. Trump is scrambling to reinvigorate American manufacturing, the tariffs succeeded in causing indiscriminate disruption, shattering confidence, destabilizing industries, and eroding pillars of U.S. economic reach.

History's most successful empires had stability, but the U.S. disrupted established trading patterns and brought instability to its own economy. Tariffs made normal items more expensive to American consumers. Business investments ground to a halt with uncertainty, as banks tightened loans in response to Trump's uncertainty of executive actions, imposed over Congress' objections. Trust in America's economic leadership require predictability and a dedication to domestic and international laws, which these abrupt changes undermine a nation and its trading partners.

The ripple effects spill over into large industries. Car manufacturers, who rely on global supply chains, have their costs explode. Farmers, who have been sheltered in their exports, are victims of retaliatory tariffs. With production coming to a standstill and jobs lost, American workers, the very people these policies are meant to assist, are collateral damage. Trump in his speech to a joint session of Congress, warning his fellow Americans, "it may be a little bit of an adjustment period."

Power is never in a vacuum; it rests on the coalitions formed on trust and common benefit. Canada and the EU, long stable trading blocs, are now forced to adapt to a more hostile economic world. Their solution is to target central American industries such as, alcohol, motorcycles, agriculture, steel, aluminum, softwood lumber, and energy, stressing the economic pillars of U.S. states.

Together, China and a few other countries achieved stability by achieving BRICS, leveraging the bloc to resist Western dominance. With the inclusion of more countries in BRICS, China is seeking a multipolar international order, encouraging trade, investments, and infrastructure with the securing of essential resources. With leadership of the New Development Bank of China that funds global development projects, China strengthens its position even further. By BRICS, it makes strategic alignments, gains access to markets, and gains world economic and political leadership. Once more, Trump's tantrum threats to the BRICS nations of placing 100% tariffs on BRICS nations as a possible extension of the America's isolation with respect to future economic powers.

No single unipolar empire collapses within a night. It crumbles incrementally, through strategic miscalculations that domestically and internationally till the structure falters and collapses under the weight of itself. By engaging in economic war as a neocolonialist empire, America is fraying its coalitions, sacrificing its own businesses, and racing towards the inevitable multipolar planet, where power is no longer concentrated in Washington but diffused across the face of the planet as nations aim for the same prosperity long granted to the West.

History will remember this moment not as an American resurgence of power, but as the time when its fragmentation began. For neocolonial power, lost once, is rarely regained.