When Donald Trump upsets free-market liberals with new tariffs, the US president’s critics tend to pin the blame on him alone. “Trump’s trade war”, as the shorthand goes, is either a “negotiating position” (the optimistic view, now increasingly defunct with the introduction of broader tariffs on China) or the latest manifestation of what many see as a full-blown personality disorder.
The truth is both more complicated, and less flattering to Mr Trump’s ego — there is a much broader group of people in both the public and the private sector who would like to reverse the economic integration of China and the US for strategic reasons.
This was evident at a two-day event sponsored late last month by the National Defense University, which brings together military and civilian leaders to discuss the big challenges of the day. Dozens of experts, government officials, and business leaders gathered to talk about the decline in the post-second world war order, the rise of China, and how the US could strengthen its manufacturing and defence industries. The goal would be to create resilient supply chains that could withstand not just a trade war, but an actual war.