If this is a trade war, the United States will win

Donald Trump is following through on his threat—or promise, as his voters see it—to impose steep tariffs on foreign goods in the name of supporting American industry, starting with levies of 25 per cent on steel and 10 per cent on aluminium imports. Allies and neighbors that had been granted temporary exemptions are now set to feel the brunt of the tariffs: Canada is America’s leading source of foreign steel, and Mexico and the European Union will also feel the pain. They’re all threatening to retaliate, and the press is calling this a trade war.

If this is a war, it’s one the United States will win. The thing to keep in mind when reading about retaliation is that the US has trade deficits with all of these countries—as well, of course, with China, which is not one of America’s leading sources of steel but whose state-subsidized steel industry is responsible for depressing prices globally. Because the US buys far more goods from these countries than they buy from us, they stand to lose much more in a tit-for-tat over tariffs. How can China or Canada put tariffs on American goods that they don’t actually buy? They can’t, and what they do buy, while not insignificant, pales before what Americans buy from them…

China’s long-term goal in this will be very familiar to anyone who has studied the history of trade, war, and imperialism. Beijing would like to build up its own industrial power and hollow out that of the United States, its chief long-run strategic rival. Under imperialism, the metropole liked to foster and protect industry at home and keep colonies dependent by depriving them of manufacturing and getting them to import finished goods rather than creating them (let alone exporting them). Leverage belongs to the manufacturers. China has no need to start a war with the United States. One superpower can replace another by a gradual process of economic eclipse and induced de-industrialization. Let Americans think that their “service economy” will sustain itself. It won’t: a nation without a strong manufacturing base is as vulnerable as a nation that cannot feed itself or supply its own vital natural resources.