Blowback at the ranch

The tariffs guy: Trump speaking to the media after arriving in Scotland on Friday. Washington’s unreasonable tariffs will begin in five days – but will they backfire on the US? — Reuters

THE world has five more days before US tariffs kick in, determining if a country’s economy is to be throttled or allowed to limp on.

That narrative pervades just about every pundit community and commentariat. These are menacingly interesting times, less from shocking novelty than from agonising familiarity.

In 2013, then US president Barack Obama boasted of taking almost twice as many anti-China trade actions as his predecessor, George W. Bush. The following year this became a trade war in everything but name.

In 2015 Obama tried to hijack the Trans-Pacific Partnership to exclude and marginalise China’s booming economy. Such an enormous undertaking takes time to build, so in coming late in the second half of his second term, it fizzled out.

Donald Trump avoided pressuring China in his first year, 2017. Tension then rose until the 2020 election, as the trading world held its collective breath in hopes a Biden administration would change tack.

President Joe Biden instead escalated the trade war. Targeting China had become a bipartisan mission.

Some observers then switched their hopes to Trump 2.0 making trade peace – how could things get any worse? Besides, Trump’s election campaign the second time around pledged a resolution.

But the Ukraine war lingered – and as the trade war suffered from inattention, it festered. Trumpian grievances soon multiplied as Trump 2.0 settled in.

With tariffs at full tilt, BRICS countries were warned of an additional 10% tariff for their “anti-American” policies. It was GW Bush’s “with us or against us” duality again.

The hauntingly familiar whiff of a previous administration persisted. BRICS and everything else only needed to be independent to be regarded as adversarial.

Meanwhile, even countries that did not offend US trade sensibilities would suffer a 10% tariff for the privilege of trading with it. Those daring to sell more than they bought from US industry would be punished with higher tariffs.

Such are the imperious presumptions of a sole superpower aspiring to global leadership by neocolonialism. All other countries have to be defined by the rules, norms, and standards it has set for them.

Unreasonableness is typically part of the attitude. And thus Elbridge Colby, US Under-secretary of Defence for Policy, demanded that Japan and Australia say exactly what they would do as allies if war erupted with China over Taiwan.

The dubious question junked the long-held policy of “strategic ambiguity” – the deliberate lack of clarity on action for leverage to better deter hostilities. It also disregards the vital importance of the specific conditions determining any action.

How would such a hypothetical conflict begin? Who would then be the initiator or perceived perpetrator, who the hapless victim, and who the supposed saviour?

Where would natural justice, just cause, proportionate response, or casus belli stand, and who would define them? How would the contested issues leading up to conflict relate to international law?

Not least, how can any country’s present government foretell how a future government would think and act? Given these multiple unknowns and unknowables, any answer to Colby’s question is more likely to be wrong than right.

Too much is assumed of allies, as if they were mere appendages without political will or interests of their own. An ally in peacetime, including in deterring conflict with others, need not be an ally to the same extent or at all when conflict breaks out.

Some countries may even opt to be an ally in peacetime so as better to deter any conflict in which they would choose not to be involved. Where individual national interests prevail, even signed treaties can be interpreted differently when crisis hits.

Trump’s worldwide tariffs and their severity even on US allies show that alliances are not valued. The situation can cut both ways.

When unreason reigns, anything goes and all bets are off. This again has the eerie ring of familiarity in its senselessness and bipartisanship.

Biden’s economic coercion denied China high-end chips and the equipment to make them. Goalposts kept shifting until US companies like Nvidia saw China forced from being their biggest customer to become their biggest rival through its enforced self-reliance.

Confronted with falling revenues, including valuable resources for innovation to stay competitive, they pushed back and lobbied Trump 2.0 to change course. Nvidia may now supply China with higher-end but still tech- constrained H2O chips.

The lobbying no doubt argued that starved of better chips, China would inevitably make them itself. That is true enough, but so would supplying the H2O chips now.

Only fools would challenge today’s China on manufacturing or technology. Chips that go into everything, and advanced chips in everything competitive, embody both. Punitive US measures have not only failed but backfired.

It is too late to stop China’s advancing technology or global perceptions of US unreliability. This comes from a clueless Washington goading China, directed more by sentiment and irrationality than intellect or wisdom.

Bunn Nagara is director and senior fellow at the Renaissance Strategic Research Institute, and honorary fellow of the Perak Academy. The views expressed here are solely his own.