Economic power is the single most important element of national security. Without it, national security is little more than a Potemkin village, consisting of a bunch of shiny tanks and planes sitting on a strangling pile of debt.

That realization is lost on the screeching Wall Street crowd who think the only thing that matters is the stock market.

The current situation, in which the United States ran massive trade deficits while embracing societal collapse levels of debt, is unsustainable. You must be either blindingly bad at math or suffering from a severe case of Trump Derangement Disease not to realize this. I have yet to hear a single critic of the tariffs offer an alternate course that didn’t end with collapse.

During the Cold War, the U.S. didn’t defeat the Soviet Union with tanks and fighter jets. Those military capabilities were a reflection of U.S. economic might and eventually the Soviet Union imploded under massive military spending unmoored from economic strength.

As we started this decade, we were playing out the same Cold War scenario with China, only this time, we cast ourselves into the role of the Soviet Union. An unfair economic system tilted massively in China’s favor allowed them to build up their military even as we helped fund it through the massive trade deficit.

Playing the long game, the PRC’s patient leaders almost certainly welcomed U.S. military spending. That spending of borrowed dollars continued to drive up the national debt, with the nation crushing interest that came with it to the tune of a few billion dollars a day, hastening the collapse of their primary rival.

Without a change of course, this was inevitable. For many U.S. politicians, this was their preferred policy, as they talked about managed decline, which is a euphemism for U.S. surrender. Managed decline, by its nature, leads to the rise of the dragon to engulf those around them. Long-standing American allies were orienting to this outcome. That’s what weak U.S. leadership does.

We haven’t run a trade surplus since 1975 with the trade deficit now sitting around a cool trillion dollars. The current trade deficit with China is around $300 billion. We were like Ray in Ghostbusters who chose the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man as Earth’s destroyer, only we chose to empower the military of a communist nation intent on decisively defeating America on the battlefield and supplanting it as the world leader.

These tariffs, which are an attempt to reorient the global economic system, are a response to this national security threat while also supporting the mistreated American working class, which is a true national tragedy.

These tariffs will hammer the ChiComs. Any short-term pain experienced here will be dwarfed in comparison to the mountain of bricks landing on them. They will not be able to replace their ability to flood the U.S. with their products, particularly since their own domestic market is so weak. Nor will they find a market to replace the U.S.

The thing about decisive American leadership is that other nations will follow. It was the vacuum of leadership that enabled China to do so much damage. Other countries, as they line up to negotiate with the Trump team, are far more likely to follow America’s lead in checking the threat against them.

The longer China fails to acknowledge that they can’t win a trade war with the U.S., the more they will be defanged as supply chains move out of China to other markets.

I suspect China did exactly what the president wanted when they launched retaliatory tariffs, since it is in our national interest to reorient away from China. The perfect scenario played out for the administration, with nearly every country expressing a willingness to negotiate with Trump’s team except China. This enabled the administration to pause reciprocal tariffs on everyone but China, while leaving some baseline tariffs in place. It’s almost as if Trump knew what he was doing.

A win, by any other name, is still a win, but this is a massive win-win. The administration was able to stand up for the American working and middle classes while tilting the economic battlefield away from China. There is a huge price to pay for coming to the table late and China is now firmly at the back of the line, right where Trump wanted them. For the first time in a long time, America is on a path to rebuild industrial capacity, which is essential to protect national security.

During World War II, wiser Japanese military leaders feared America’s industrial might even as they believed American soldiers to be inferior to their own. That fear was well founded. Once American factories started cranking out ships, planes and tanks, the outcome was all but a foregone conclusion.

In those kinds of heavyweight fights, the ability to replace lost capability is a decisive factor. We could crank out an aircraft carrier every month while Japan could not replace their losses. That manufacturing juggernaut was our asymmetric advantage.

That advantage now belongs to our biggest rival. We’ve waved goodbye to more than 91,000 manufacturing plants since 1997. If we got into a shooting war with China, we must acknowledge they have far more manufacturing capability than we do. When your opponent knows that they are better positioned to win a war of attrition, it’s impossible to achieve deterrence.

Had we allowed the economic battlefield to remain tilted, it wasn’t a question of if but when China was going to swallow Taiwan while forcing other U.S. allies to bow before it. Their intent was to make it such a fait accompli that the U.S. wouldn’t dare try to stop them since the cost would be too high. They are dangerously close. Winning an economic war is always preferable to losing a shooting war.  It’s the Art of the Deal versus the Art of War with Trump choosing a battlefield where he can win.

My one concern with the tariffs is that China is not oblivious to the fact that the ground just shifted dramatically under their feet. They can’t win this economic battle. The U.S. has too much leverage and they are no longer dealing with a president, and a party, lining up to sell out their country. Their addle-brained “10% for the big guy” puppet and his son, Cocaine Picasso, no longer call the shots. Instead, they are faced with a formidable player willing to go all-in for America.

My one concern is that the PRC could accelerate their timeline to move on Taiwan if they no longer believe there is an advantage in waiting. While that is concerning, that possibility is worth the certainty of a Taiwan invasion if we did not act to check their economic power.

In the meantime, the administration is focused on rebuilding our military strength, asking for a trillion-dollar military budget focused on lethality and not tied down like Gulliver with DEI-fueled nonsense spending. That deterrence has never been more important.

Decades of bad policy aren’t fixed overnight but this is a game changer. While still in the early stages of a new trade stance, some things are already clear. America will emerge stronger. China will become weaker economically, which will check their power to become militarily undeterrable. And America has a president and administration looking out for the interest of America and Americans. What a novel concept.

Image from Grok.

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