We’ve seen the future, and it's Russian (and Chinese, and...)

How the West helped Russia become a model of thriving in a world of US economic warfare

Another Trump-Quake has been shaking the world. In his attempt to, in essence, make America great again by eliminating its trade deficits and re-industrializing it into, in his own words, “an entirely different country,” US President Donald Trump has launched a global tariff campaign that has shocked the world by being even fiercer than expected.

Its details are convoluted – involving almost scholastic debates on the meaning of the term “reciprocal” as well as bizarre math to calculate the tariffs – and its impact is uneven, but its core is simple: The US is greatly, often massively increasing tariffs on imports from almost every other country in the world. It is thereby disrupting the international economic order as it currently exists, making a harsh contribution to wrenching it from moribund globalization into an emerging age of protectionism and geopolitically redirected trade flows.