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Unlock the US Election Countdown newsletter for freeThe stories that matter on money and politics in the race for the White HouseThe writer is a professor at Johns Hopkins University and co-author of βUnderground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economyβ with Abraham Newman, who also contributedDonald Trump likes to say that he alone can protect America from being βripped offβ by greedy allies. So why does he want to replace the one cornerstone of national security that foreigners subsidise, with a system that would make American consumers pay the costs? In recent weeks, Trump has talked about moving away from US financial sanctions against Russia and China, which he claims are undermining the dollar and making Chinaβs currency more attractive. Instead Trump wants to turn tariffs into Americaβs go-to tool for coercion. The threat of 100 per cent tariffs might force reluctant governments to stick with the dollar, or coerce skinflint Nato members into spending more on their military. America does have an unhealthy relationship with financial sanctions. But it got hooked on them because it doesnβt have to pay most of their costs. It makes foreigners pay instead. Trump wants to give this up, replacing US sanctions power with a costly knock-off of Chinese economic coercion. It is unlikely that the former president is interested in the long-term risks of sanctions overuse. He probably wants to relieve pressure on Russia and cryptocurrency (which is increasingly clashing with the US security state). But even if heβs insincere, heβs not completely wrong. Dollar power allows the US to press foreign banks and financial actors into service, forcing them to cut off adversariesβ access to the global financial system. That is why Americaβs financial sanctions are so powerful. But as officials like former Treasury secretary Jacob Lew have argued, the more that the US exploits the dollar, the more that other countries will look for ways around it. Still, the dollar, if used carefully, allows America to conduct coercion on the cheap. China isnβt nearly so lucky. It has to pay to punish others.Β The Chinese government doesnβt control global finance, and has instead weaponised access to Chinaβs markets to inflict economic pain on other countries. Cutting off market access hurts China as well as its targets, undermining its trade and weakening its prosperity.Β Chinese businesses and consumers lose their access to foreign goods, or have to pay more for them. For example, when China wanted to punish Australia, it manipulated regulations to stop imports of Australian coal. That didnβt work very well. Limiting market access reportedly cost China $2bn a week while encouraging Australia to find lucrative markets elsewhere. That is the approach that Trump wants to copy, using huge tariffs to cut off market access, instead of regulations. To borrow the language of his opponent, Kamala Harris, Trump wants to replace Americaβs economic key security weapon with a vastly inefficient βsales taxβ on American consumers and businesses. Instead of taking advantage of Chinaβs vulnerabilities, he wants to emulate them.This would happen at enormous scale: Trump promises βbigger tariffs than youβve ever seen in this country beforeβ.Β And as JD Vance suggests, it is likely to be used to punish allies as well as, or perhaps even instead of, adversaries.Of course, the more that the US uses tariffs to punish allies, the more they will look for markets elsewhere. The German economy is already deeply entangled with Chinaβs. It will become more so if Trump wins and gets his way. The careful efforts of the Biden administration to build long-term co-operative arrangements with allies over semiconductor export and manufacture will be ripped into shreds. Itβs true that the US has become addicted to financialΒ sanctions. But punitive tariffs are a much harder drug, with harsher immediate side-effects and a worse long-term prognosis.
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