Bulwark’s editor, Jonathan V Last, pointed out the sad reality that the deal with China has proven. Trump’s reelection will cost us our reputation for more than a generation as the world moves on from us.
China proves the American-led order is over.
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Summary
A conservative-leaning pundit, Jonathan V Last, concedes that Donald Trump’s hyper-nationalist “deal” with China shattered the post-1945 U.S.-led world order by exposing Washington’s unreliability and economic coercion. Allies now hedge with new trade pacts and defense compacts while Beijing quietly fills the vacuum.
- Trump’s tariff whiplash and 90-day “truce” with Beijing undercut U.S. credibility and weakened the dollar, eroding consumers’ purchasing power.
- Penn-Wharton projects the 2025 tariff slate will slice 6 percent from long-run U.S. GDP and cost a middle-income family roughly $22,000 over a lifetime.
- Ottawa’s recent election focused on whether Canada should decouple from a capricious United States; voters answered “yes,” rewarding a platform that seeks diversified trade.
- Paris and Berlin just launched a bilateral Security Council meant to backstop Europe if NATO falters. The council includes talk of extending France’s nuclear umbrella.
- Analysts at Brookings warn that regaining the trust of allies could take a generation because soft-power capital cannot be rebuilt by a single election cycle.
Progressives view the collapse of U.S. hegemony not as a tragedy but as an overdue wake-up call: Washington must swap corporate-friendly unilateralism for equitable multilateralism that centers labor, climate, and human rights or risk permanently ceding moral and economic leadership.
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Jonathan V Last‘s lament rings true: Donald Trump did not merely disrupt trade flows; he unraveled the fragile glue that held together the liberal international order. By weaponizing tariffs against foes and friends alike, the forty-seventh president signaled that the United States now treats rule-based cooperation as optional. PBS’s assessment of the latest “truce” with Beijing stresses that the abrupt 90-day reprieve on Chinese goods completed a humiliating walk-back of a policy that once promised “reciprocity,” leaving allies to wonder whether any U.S. commitment is more durable than a press-conference sound bite.
Progressive economists long warned that blanket tariffs would behave like a regressive tax, and empirical evidence now validates that critique. The Penn-Wharton Budget Model calculates a 6 percent hit to long-run GDP and a five-percent wage haircut, dwarfing the revenue effect of a sharp corporate-tax hike. The Tax Foundation reaches a similar verdict, projecting a 15 percent average tariff rate—America’s steepest since 1941—and a $542 billion import plunge by 2025. Those numbers translate into thinner paychecks, pricier groceries, and widening inequality, outcomes wholly at odds with MAGA rhetoric about “bringing back” manufacturing jobs.
Yet the domestic pain is only half the story. Internationally, governments are acting on the assumption that the United States has abdicated stewardship of the commons. Canada’s recent election doubled as a referendum on whether Ottawa should anchor its economy to an unpredictable neighbor; voters empowered a government that openly courts European and Asian partners to offset U.S. exposure. Inside Europe, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced a Franco-German Defense and Security Council designed to coordinate nuclear deterrence and weapons procurement—an unmistakable hedge against a NATO alliance they now describe as “no longer sufficient.” Such moves echo Obama’s 2016 warning that “if we don’t write the rules, China will.” Eight years later, Beijing is indeed drafting those rules, from the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership to Belt and Road debt diplomacy.
Brookings scholars caution that reputational capital cannot be restored by electing one prudent successor; the world remembers that Americans freely chose belligerent isolation in 2016 and again in 2024. For progressives, the implication is clear: the United States must lead by example, not edict. Re-entering the Paris Climate Agreement was a start. Still, a genuine reset demands ending punitive tariffs, embracing an Industrial Policy that ties public subsidies to domestic labor standards, and championing democratic reform at home, beginning with the abolition of the anti-majoritarian Electoral College that enabled Trump’s first victory.
Critics on the Right claim that ditching tariffs would surrender leverage to Beijing. The data say otherwise. Tariffs invite retaliation, dull export competitiveness, and incentivize offshoring to tariff-free jurisdictions; they are the economic equivalent of burning crops to protest food prices. A progressive alternative would pair targeted carbon border adjustments with multilateral wage-floor agreements, closing loopholes without alienating allies. Such cooperation is impossible, however, when Washington imposes blanket levies and declares national emergencies to override Congress, as Trump’s April 2025 proclamation did.
The pundit featured in the video ultimately concedes that restoring faith in U.S. leadership may take a generation. That timeline need not hold if the next administration embraces progressive internationalism—canceling ill-conceived tariffs, investing in green technology partnerships, and submitting major trade moves to congressional and public scrutiny. Rebuilding trust means acknowledging harm first, then offering tangible proof of change. Domestic workers must see upgraded infrastructure and union jobs created through fair-trade procurement; foreign publics must witness the United States honoring commitments from climate finance to refugee resettlement.
Historically, empires fade when they cling to zero-sum nationalism rather than adapt to interdependence. Progressives argue that America’s best chance at renewal lies not in resurrecting hegemony but in championing a cooperative order where prosperity is shared, human rights are non-negotiable, and the planet’s survival overrides corporate quarterly reports. The China “deal” episode is a cautionary tale: leadership built on coercion collapses quickly, but leadership grounded in solidarity can still emerge—if Washington chooses it.
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