Over the past two decades, a distinctive kind of color-coded map has become a staple of economic journalism. These maps were designed to show the leading commercial partner of countries around the world. Gradually at first, and then in an onrush of change, they filled up with a new color—usually red—as China surpassed the United States as the top bilateral trader with almost every nation on Earth.
As China became the globe’s dominant trade superpower, largely on the strength of its manufacturing prowess, leaders in the West and Asia wondered how much—and how quickly—Beijing would be able to convert its recent commercial strength into geopolitical advantage. That process has been much slower and more limited than many expected. It turns out that patterns established decades ago, when colonial rule was still widespread, are hard to displace.
The United States was never a major colonial power in the European mode, but it was an unrivaled economic behemoth for most of the post-World War II era. It was also an English-speaking nation in a world heavily shaped by Britain—one that became the international community’s leading rule-maker and enforcer. And it developed a language of virtue and values that seems to have registered with people around the world more than the reality that it often failed to live up to its own ideals.
These attributes helped Washington stave off competition from Beijing even after China began racking up ever larger trade surpluses. Now, however, the United States has allowed these advantages to erode—and worse, even tossed them away.
In the past few weeks, U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration have busied themselves in a frenzy of devaluing these traditional sources of strength. They have signaled that the United States now champions a world where might makes right and the strong can nakedly impose their will on the weak.
The Trump administration has made this clear to longtime foes, such as Iran, which the United States jointly attacked with Israel shortly after suggesting that it would give diplomacy a chance to address Tehran’s nuclear program. More strikingly, though, Washington has applied its rough, my-way-or-the-highway approach to friendly nations, including outright allies. Nowhere has this been more evident than in the area of trade.
In the early months of his second term, Trump boasted that he would be able to quickly reach new trade agreements with a large number of countries, encapsulated in the slogan “90 deals in 90 days.” Very few of these have come to pass. His administration has announced agreements with just four countries—Britain, China, Indonesia, and Vietnam—and these have been either bare-bones frameworks or deals with few public details.
After few countries came running to Washington to secure quick deals, Trump switched to an even cruder approach. Last week, he sent letters to the leaders of a more than two dozen countries, unilaterally announcing new terms for maintaining commercial relations with the United States.
The language from one letter to the next was strikingly consistent. These missives set exorbitant new tariff rates, highlighted the supposed privilege that countries enjoyed simply for being able to sell their goods to Americans, and claimed that the United States had long been taken advantage of. Each bore Trump’s oversized, even megalomaniacal, signature at the bottom.
But the correspondence addressed to South Korean President Lee Jae-Myung particularly caught my eye: “If for any reason you decide to raise your Tariffs, then, whatever the number you choose to raise them by, will be added to the 25% that we charge,” Trump wrote.
What was most peculiar to me was not Trump’s vulgar and imposing tone or the lack of refinement in official correspondence from a U.S. president. Neither of these is altogether new. Rather, it was how disconnected the letter was from the realities of the U.S.-South Korea trade relationship. Seoul already has a free trade agreement with Washington and imposes almost zero tariffs on U.S. goods.
This kind of casual arbitrariness matters for the United States’ future in a world where China dominates international commercial exchanges. If Trump can so thoughtlessly bully treaty allies such as South Korea and Japan—or other countries with traditionally close ties or even a degree of dependence on Washington for their security—then it is time to establish a new countdown: How long will it be before they discount their ties with the United States and build new economic partnerships and security networks instead?
The answer is uncertain, but none of this bodes well for the United States’ long-term position in the world. Eventually, U.S. allies will change course as a matter of their own prosperity and self-preservation. And if even long-standing allies can begin to fundamentally recalculate the advantages of working with Washington, will countries that are less deeply connected to the United States be far behind?
Some early ramifications of Trump’s actions are already clear, beginning in Europe. In recent weeks, Britain and France have announced that they will coordinate their nuclear weapons arsenals in the event of a foreign attack, while Britain and Germany have seriously upgraded their defense ties. None of these countries’ leaders mentioned U.S. capriciousness and unilateralism as a reason for these moves, but it is hard to imagine that they did not have Washington’s behavior in mind.
In fact, the Trump administration anticipated these kinds of shifts months ago, when it suggested that it would see any moves by Canada and the European Union to draw closer together politically and economically as hostile to the United States.
Yet anticipating these relationships has not prevented Washington from taking further measures that risk dramatically alienating friends and tarnishing its long-standing appeal to others as a champion of supposedly universal values. Unilaterally raising tariffs to levels not seen since the early 20th century may be just the first step onto a slippery slope.
So far, Japan and South Korea, which are key to U.S. power in East Asia, have been slower than Europe in finding ways to hedge against the erratic and imperial style on display in Washington. But if Trump continues in this direction, then China’s policies and behavior will gradually become less of a source of concern than those of the United States. As this happens, at some point down the road, Washington will have achieved for China what China could not achieve for itself through trade supremacy alone.
This post is part of FP’s ongoing coverage of the Trump transition. Follow along here.