How Trump increased China's global power

You know, we read news about tariffs and trade wars, and it can be hard to follow, hard to see it in context, see how meaningful the latest move is.

But you had a remarkable piece a few months back about what happened in this trade war between the, the U.S. and China, and argued that there was a moment when China really proved that it was America's equal.

Now, this was-- This began, you know, in 2025, in the second Trump administration, when President Trump began using tariffs, one of his favorite tools, and hit China particularly hard, imposing tariffs as high as 140%.

How did China respond?

There are moments, quite frankly, in world history where you feel the tectonic plates shifting beneath you.

You know, what happened in 2025 was President Trump took tariffs on China to over 140%.

I mean, we'd never done that before.

And that pushed China into a corner.

And President Xi had no choice but to reach for his break glass tool, and that was his control over the rare earth minerals and magnets upon which pretty much all global manufacturing depends, and which basically only come from China.

And so that was a real powerful choke point.

And when he reached for that tool, President Trump basically folded.

He'd heard from auto companies that they were concerned that their production was gonna shut down if they couldn't get these minerals.

Others made similar representations to the White House.

And so he said, "All right, let me take the tariffs down by about 100 points," and even below that.

And after he did that, he also basically pursued a detente with China.

The idea was, "We don't want to rock the boat too much with China.

They've got this enormous capability.

Let's avoid too many competitive actions that the Chinese won't like.

Let's avoid anything confrontational.

Let's just steady as she goes." Which actually meant, in practice, some American economic interests weren't being protected because there was risk.

You write that Trump actually had considered retaliating with financial sanctions, new controls on, you know, sophisticated manufactured computer chips.

Could've been very strong measures, but he decided not to.

That's right.

I think President Trump had a number of options available to him, and they were risky.

Let's be clear.