Opinion | How Trump Is Weaponizing the Global System

If we think about globalization, globalization back in the ’90s and the 2000s, it seemed like it was an incredible opportunity to build a new kind of economic world in which markets dominated rather than geopolitics. So you have all of these ideas floating around about: We’re past the world of the Cold War, we’re past, the world of the Berlin Wall. And we’re now in a new world where it is going to be possible to rebuild politics around market competition. You don’t have to worry about your neighbors invading you. You don’t have to worry about all of these political risks. Instead, you just focus on being the most competitive market that you absolutely can be. And this leads to enormous amounts of integration. So we see supply chains becoming global. We see these financial systems which are focused on the United States becoming a means through which people can send money back and forth without really worrying or thinking about the politics behind it. And we see this entire plumbing for this new global economy becoming established. And all of this seems great and awesome and functional. But we’re in a world now where the plumbing has become political. All of these means that we use to integrate the world, all of these financial systems, all of these trade and production systems are suddenly being turned against countries —— “Threatening 100 percent tariffs on Canadian imports.” “They’re massive sanctions.” I call this weaponized interdependence. So we have this idea that there is this new world where all of the interdependence that we have has become, in a sense, a means for big powers, and especially big powers which have control over these networks in one way, shape or form, to exercise coercion over others. And the United States, which actually has been doing this in a much quieter and perhaps less threatening way to many countries, at least for decades, is, in fact, the country that is pushing this the hardest.