For as long as anyone can remember, whether it was leading the fight against Soviet expansionism, winning the Cold War or launching global economic integration in its aftermath, the world has viewed the United States as a superpower. Even today, as the pendulum swings away from globalization and U.S. national debt exceeds annual gross domestic product, it’s still viewed as the world’s dominant power. Most nations measure their strength in terms of warships, missiles, warheads and the amount of money they spend on defense.
It’s an important metric. As Ronald Reagan taught us, “Peace comes through strength,” but that should not be measured in military might alone. Our real power, as President Donald Trump seems to intuitively understand, comes from our economic strength and the people and system that produce it.
That strength rests on freedom, particularly the economic freedoms that allow individuals to control the means of production and to innovate, build, buy, sell, invest and make the U.S. market the place everyone wants to access. Academics and commentators usually miss that. America is strongest and at its most successful when it uses the overwhelming power of commercial enterprise to shape global outcomes.
Retaliatory tariffs, economic sanctions and even hard-nosed commercial diplomacy are central instruments of power, which is how Trump has used them. As a businessman rather than a lawyer, Trump understands this better than most modern presidents. It’s no surprise his foreign policy instincts focus on transactions rather than high-minded principles à la Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama, but that’s not a weakness.
The world is competing for supply routes, capital investment, energy supplies, technology footholds, prestige events. Transactions are the stuff of “strategery,” as it was called more than a decade ago. Hard-won business deals, including pro-U.S. concessions, are as good if not better than diplomatic victories.
Tariff threats are bargaining chips. Sanctions isolate and impoverish adversaries without. Tax cuts attract global capital.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
