The article discusses how the U.S. has cultivated a global economic system focused on cooperation and shared interests for over seventy-five years. This framework has elevated the U.S. as a financial superpower due to stability in trade and trust in the dollar. However, President Trump's recent trade policies signal a shift towards conflict-driven economics, characterized by tariffs and competition among nations. Historian Greg Grandin emphasizes a new mindset where intrinsic national conflicts replace collective values, suggesting a move away from mutual agreements towards a more aggressive approach to global trade relations.
The global economic system that the United States has shaped and steered for more than three-quarters of a century was animated by a powerful guiding vision: that trade and finance would be based on cooperation and consent rather than coercion.
By provoking a worldwide trade war, President Trump risks abandoning that vision of shared interests and replacing it with one that assumes sharp economic conflicts are unavoidable.
This is a completely different vision... in which the first principle is that nations don't have shared interests; they have inherent conflicts of interests.
The strongest powers determine the rules and enforce them through intimidation and bare-knuckled power.
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