COLUMNS

Where U.S. Trade Policy and Grand Strategy Intersect

undefined and VP of Global Analysis
Reva Goujon
VP of Global Analysis, Stratfor

Apr 19, 2018 | 16:07 GMT

U.S. President Donald Trump, during an April 17, 2018, meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

U.S. President Donald Trump, during an April 17, 2018, meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. U.S. President Donald Trump's economic assault on U.S. trading partners notwithstanding, the return of great power competition will bring with it a more strategic approach by the United States toward trade, with a focus on containing China.

(MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)

Highlights

  • History shows how trade policy can be a potent tool in the U.S. strategic arsenal, especially when containing peer competitors.
  • Trade policy was a matter of intense debate for the Founding Fathers, but it took a massive shock in the form of the Great Depression for the United States to restructure and position itself to wield trade policy as a tool of grand strategy.
  • U.S. President Donald Trump's economic assault on U.S. trading partners is a reaction to decades of pent-up economic discontent and a nebulous era in the global arena in which the United States lacked a well-defined adversary.
  • But great power competition is back, and with it will come a more strategic approach toward trade and a focus on containing China.

With the threat of a trade war looming over the global economy, it may feel like the world has been force-fed another one of U.S. President Donald Trump's signature cocktails -- shaken on the rocks, with equal parts tweets and tariffs, and a twist of terror. But if you want to shake off that foggy feeling and get a clearer vision of what will come to pass, focus on the line between a president's tactics, no matter how unorthodox, and the country's grand strategy. Great power rivalry is what gave rise to the global trading order in the 20th century; the return of peer competition will shake, but not necessarily break, that foundation in the 21st....

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