February 04, 2025

The World Has Changed Since Trump’s First Trade War. Other Countries Are Ready to Fight Back.

By: Edward Fishman

Of all the powers of the presidency, none comes more naturally to Donald Trump than weaponizing America’s economic might.

Since returning to the White House, he has ordered sweeping tariffs on China, Canada and Mexico and threatened a barrage of sanctions and levies on everyone from Colombia and Russia to the European Union and the BRICS.

With so many countries armed and ready, the challenge for Trump will be to use economic weapons to advance U.S. interests without leaving America isolated or ruining the world economy.

Trump’s second term is shaping up to be a turbocharged version of his first, when he styled himself “Tariff Man” and brandished a “Game of Thrones”–inspired poster warning “Sanctions Are Coming.” Then, as now, his actions matched his rhetoric: He slapped tariffs on China, cut microchip exports to Huawei and launched “maximum pressure” campaigns against Iran, North Korea and Venezuela. He imposed nearly as many sanctions in four years as Barack Obama did in eight.

Back then, retaliation was muted. America still inhabited a world akin to the dawn of the nuclear age in the 1940s: It possessed fearsome economic weapons, but no one else did. Today, the world looks very different. Many countries are prepared to fight back. The risk of a rapidly escalating global economic war is high—and America is poorly equipped to prevent it.

Read the full article on The Wall Street Journal.

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