If America’s trade and foreign policies are now seemingly subservient to the question of immigration, it makes some sense as a negotiation ploy to start a trade war with India, on top of China, the EU, and Canada. This is not a good or bad judgement call: An administration’s purpose is what it does. One can understand the Miller-Vance prioritization of immigration über alles, and can see why everything else is a negotiation tactic. The alternative explanation—that American foreign and trade policy is now beholden to the continuation of a conflict with Russia or to safeguard Israeli hegemonic aspirations in the Middle East, and the U.S. will happily torch a relationship with the EU, Canada, India and Russia, without any long term plan for China—is so imbecilic that one shudders to contemplate it.
Neither India nor the EU is currently in a position to dictate terms yet. The U.S. buys around 18 percent of all Indian products, making it the largest market for Indian goods. The EU cannot function without American military protection, and the EU products—watches, alcohol, and cars—can absorb tariff rates in the U.S., given the demographics. Someone spending money on European watches in the U.S. won’t worry much about paying a bit more. But the long-term strategic effects are more worrisome.
The current strategic scenario stands like this: tariffs (which are essentially here used as sanctions) on India (for buying and selling) and on the EU (for buying) Russian oil because of a war no one in MAGA cares about (Ukraine), while the Asia-Firsters get nothing. This is clearly absurd. I am not sure if Lindsay Graham is advising the president on this, but for some reason the President seems to be under the impression that the war in Ukraine is similar to a border war in Cambodia, i.e., you just call them and they’ll stop. The administration also seems desperate somehow to push Russia and Ukraine towards peace, when neither side is willing to sue for peace. The Russians are actually winning on the battleground, the Europeans are unwilling to step up, and the Ukrainians are eager to scuttle any peace overture at the last minute. Why are we trying to untie this Gordian knot, instead of cutting it?
In order to will that impossibility into existence, the U.S. is currently aiming a trade war with one third of humanity. America is on the path towards a simultaneous confrontation with New Delhi, Beijing, and Moscow, the first and third of which were supposed to be in alignment with us to contain the second. No one likes a Napoleonic power. Individually, none of these states barring China is a peer rival. Simultaneously, however, if we push them towards each other—they’ll join together to replace the reserve currency, sell bonds, and stop all pharmaceutical and rare earth trade to the U.S. Given the mood, the Europeans might offer to replace the U.S. outright.
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If China invades Taiwan, the U.S. won’t get any help from either India or Russia, whether it be stopping fuel exports, granting bases, or sharing intelligence. American products, especially weapons, are already taboo in a large part of Asia. Arms control and vital tech proliferation efforts are obviously toast. Australia is buying from Japan, and Indians are choosing European jets over American ones. It will only tend towards a complete American autarky and isolation. Listening to gerontocratic decision makers who came to prominence during unipolar days of the ’90s has resulted in this weird hubris, which is completely unable to appreciate the long game and the broader strategic scenario. The historic American grand strategy was to divide Europe and Asia. What is happening now is the opposite, pushing them all to bandwagon against us. America First is giving away to America alone.
I am personally ambivalent on tariffs. One can justify targeted tariffs on one country or rival. Whatever this is defies logic. The total capitulation of the administration to the worst of neoconservative hubris is outright bizarre. One can still understand it through the lens of immigration prioritization, but even then, the admin is actually not doing anything to stop H1-Bs, which is the only immigration issue demanding pressure on India. Scuttling the H1-Bs (a sum total of under a million present in the U.S. so far) won’t also deliver the massive working-class illegal deportation promise (20 million by some estimates), but that’s a matter for a different column.
What will happen is this. The president will be mired in trying to solve the insoluble, and the Republicans will lose the midterms. The rest of the term will be lame-duck, and this will all be the vice president’s legacy to defend in 2028. Whatever this “war of all against all” is, it is a long way from seeking “commerce, not chaos.”
