After months of jabs, threats and heated rhetoric, the great North American trade war has begun. United States President Donald Trump’s 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico went into effect on March 4, and U.S. levies on China doubled from 10 percent to 20 percent. Last year, the U.S. imported more than $1.3 trillion in goods from these three countries, so President Trump’s tariffs will reshape prices for everything from cars to medication.

The Budget Lab at Yale University estimates that tariffs on Canada, China and Mexico will cost the average American household $1,000 to $1,200 in overall annual purchasing power. This is one reason President Trump is urging Congress to reduce income taxes. Eventually, he would like to see income tax revenue replaced by excise tax revenue.

President Trump cited the role Canada, China and Mexico play in America’s fentanyl crisis as the main reason for his tariffs, yet he also wants to bring down America’s $1.2 trillion trade deficit. By making it more expensive to buy foreign goods, President Trump hopes to encourage more people to buy American products. Right now, America is dependent on Canadian cars, Chinese electronics and Mexican vegetables. Tariffs could prod America to become more self-sufficient.

As expected, Canada, China and Mexico will not take these tariffs lying down. Canada announced retaliatory tariffs on U.S. aluminum, automobiles, coffee, orange juice, steel and wine. China announced retaliatory tariffs on U.S. beef, chicken, corn, cotton, dairy products, fruits, pork, sorghum, seafood, soybeans, vegetables and wheat. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum will announce her country’s retaliatory tariffs in Mexico City’s central plaza this weekend, perhaps indicating she hopes to deescalate the trade war before then.

President Trump has indicated he may waive or reduce tariffs on Canada and Mexico if these countries step up their efforts to stop the fentanyl trade. Yet his trade war against China is likely here to stay.

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump pledged to enact a 10 percent tariff on all foreign nations—except China, which he feels should pay a 60 percent tariff. He likely hopes to reduce his 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico to 10 percent, once they secure their border, and ramp up his 20 percent tariff on China to 60 percent once the U.S. economy can handle such a high excise tax on Chinese goods. Ultimately he needs congressional approval to enact tariffs on nations that are not national security threats, so at present he is only putting tariffs on those that traffic fentanyl.

Since China is a Communist dictatorship that uses slave labor to manufacture cheap goods, President Trump’s long-term goal of a 60 percent tariff on China is morally justifiable. Yet this tariff comes with risks.

China plans to dethrone the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency, and U.S. tariffs on foreign nations could push these nations into an alliance with China. Mexico is already working with China to expand the port of Veracruz, Mexico; U.S. tariffs may prompt it to form an economic alliance with China and the European Union. This would not be terrible if America were a debt-free, self-sufficient nation. But America is not a debt-free, self-sufficient nation. To the contrary, it needs to sell roughly $11 trillion treasury bonds each year to remain fiscally solvent. Pushing foreign nations into an anti-dollar alliance could backfire spectacularly if things don’t go according to plan.

There is still a lot of geopolitical uncertainty about the long-term ramifications of President Trump’s tariffs, but Bible prophecy provides clarity.

Some 3,500 years ago, God inspired the Prophet Moses to tell America’s ancestors that if they abandoned God and His law, then “[a] nation of fierce countenance [would] besiege thee in all thy gates, until thy high and fenced walls come down …” (Deuteronomy 28:50-52). Other scriptures such as Isaiah 23 and Revelation 17 indicate that this nation of fierce countenance will be a European superpower working in conjunction with Communist China.

Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry explains in Isaiah’s End-Time Vision that Isaiah 23 describes a Euro-Chinese economic alliance against the U.S. This allows us to predict how the great North American trade war will end. President Trump likely will reach an arrangement with Canada that will allow the two nations to remain allies, but Mexico will join the Euro-Chinese economic alliance.

The “giants of Asia” will form a “brief alliance” with Europe, Mr. Flurry writes. “Should Europe, the resurrected Holy Roman Empire, find a way to take advantage—even for a moment—of key resources and strategic holdings of China, Russia and Japan, it would have more than enough power to besiege the Anglo-Saxon nations and enslave them. This is why Isaiah’s prophecy of an end-time ‘mart of nations’ that includes both European and Asian powers is so intriguing.”

This same book also talks about Latin American nations becoming virtual colonies of the Holy Roman Empire. Since Canada is an Anglo-Saxon nation and Mexico is a Latin nation, we can predict that the Deuteronomy 28 trade siege will primarily be a Euro-Chinese trade siege against the U.S. and Canada. Other Anglo-Saxon nations such as Australia, Great Britain and New Zealand will also be besieged, but they do not have the geographic fortification to make that siege much of a challenge. The economic heartland of the Anglo-Saxon peoples is the Mississippi Basin. (Request our free booklet The United States and Britain in Prophecy to learn more about the special significance of this basin.)

President Donald Trump is trying to turn North America into a self-sufficient fortress that no power on Earth can storm. Yet Bible prophecy foretells that North America will fall if its people don’t repent of their disobedience to God’s laws.

To learn more, read “Preparing to Storm America’s Castle.”