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| Economy |
| Ignore the Outrage. Trump's Trade Revolution Is Working. |
| 2026-02-23 |
| [Commonplace] It’s turning into a familiar ritual. President Trump imposes fresh tariffs, often announced on social media late at night, and within seconds the decision is condemned by officials and politicians from Brussels to Paris, Beijing, Berlin, and London. There are dramatic warnings about how trade wars benefit no one, accompanied by solemn declarations that Europe will not be bullied, and elegies for the "rules-based order." The financial press dutifully chronicles the "chaos" and "unpredictability" of American trade policy, while CNN books another expert to explain why it cannot possibly work and the Financial Times runs yet another column about how the United States is only damaging itself. Then, a few weeks later, buried somewhere on page 17, a different story starts to emerge: Germany has agreed to new defense procurement commitments; France is reconsidering agricultural protections; the European Union is suddenly open to renegotiating its digital services tax. Another trade relationship is quietly restructured, and on terms remarkably favorable to Washington. The opposition, it turns out, is mainly just for show. Behind the scenes a new consensus is starting to emerge. The Trump administration is quietly building a new global trading system—it’s just that nobody wants to talk about it. European leaders routinely denounce Trump’s tariffs and "America First" rhetoric with an over-the-top passion that would get them thrown out of drama school. Yet their finance ministers are simultaneously reworking trade agreements in ways that previous American administrations spent decades failing to achieve. The disconnect between the public theater and private reality has become so vast that one might reasonably conclude the confected outrage itself serves a purpose—providing political cover for concessions that would otherwise be impossible to explain to domestic audiences. A few examples help illustrate what is actually happening. The U.S. has spent years trying to persuade Germany to increase its military spending, to little effect. But over the last 12 months, Germany has ramped up its spending by €80 billion a year. Sure, there is lots of rhetoric about how it will "Buy European" and about how the money will reboot its industrial base. But in reality about 8% of the money will be spent on American kit, including F-35 fighter jets, P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, and Tomahawk cruise missiles. It doesn’t really matter who makes the boots. It is the high-tech equipment that really counts, and much of that will be American. It represents a fundamental shift in German industrial policy, and one that the Obama administration campaigned for in vain, that the Bush administration couldn’t extract, and that decades of NATO summits failed to deliver. Trump got it with a few threatening tweets and warnings about auto tariffs. Or take a look at France. It has long positioned itself as the defender of European agricultural interests against the marauding Americans with their genetically modified crops and chlorinated chicken. Yet the Common Agricultural Policy, that monument to protectionism and subsidy that has distorted global food markets for generations, is suddenly open for discussion. The reason? It isn’t because France’s politicians have realized that laissez-faire economics originated in their own country. It’s because the alternative—restricted access to the American market—is simply too painful to contemplate. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
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| Posted by: Abu Uluque 2026-02-23 12:39 |
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