Trump is sowing the seeds of an anti-American alliance

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“Our strategy on tariffs will be to shoot first and ask questions later.” That was what one of Donald Trump’s key economic policymakers told me late last year.

That kind of macho swagger is currently fashionable in Washington. But the US president’s shoot-from-the-hip tactics are profoundly dangerous — for America itself, as well as the countries that he has targeted with tariffs.

The potential economic risks for the US — higher inflation and industrial disruption — are well known.

The strategic consequences for America are less immediately obvious — but could be just as serious and even longer lasting. Trump’s tariffs threaten to destroy the unity of the western alliance. He is sowing the seeds of an alternative grouping formed by the many countries that feel newly threatened by America. Co-operation will be informal at first, but will harden the longer the tariff wars go on.

The collapse of western unity would be a dream come true for Russia and China. Trump himself may not care; he has often expressed his admiration for Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. But Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz — the men Trump has appointed as secretary of state and national security adviser — both claim to believe that containing Chinese power is the central strategic challenge facing the US.

If that is the case, it is profoundly stupid for Trump to impose tariffs on China, Mexico and Canada. In so doing, he is creating a convergence of interest between these three countries — as well as the EU, which has been told it is next in line for the tariff treatment.

When the Biden administration took office in 2021, the EU was poised to push through a new investment agreement with China. But that was abandoned after pressure from Washington and blunders by Beijing. By the end of the Biden period, the US and the European Commission were working closely together on efforts to “de-risk” trade with China and to restrict exports of key technology.

The Biden administration’s key insight was that, if the US is engaged in a global contest with China, it is much more likely to prevail if it can persuade the other advanced democracies to work alongside it. Trump, by contrast, has decided to go after America’s allies much more vigorously than its adversaries. The likely consequence is that he will drive those allies back towards China.

European policymakers already know that the ambitious targets they have set for the green transition will be impossible without Chinese electric vehicles, batteries and solar panels. The threat of losing American markets will make the Chinese market look even more necessary. When I suggested to a senior European policymaker last week that the EU might now consider warming up to China once again, she responded: “Believe me, that conversation is already taking place.”

Some influential Europeans are even asking whether the US or China is now the more direct threat. This would have been an absurd question just two months ago. But it is Trump — not Xi — who is talking about ending the independence of Canada, a Nato member state. And it is the Trump administration and Elon Musk — not the Chinese government — that is promoting the far-right in Europe.

Chinese mercantilism and Beijing’s support for Russia’s war on Ukraine remain major stumbling blocks to any rapprochement between China and Brussels. But if the Trump administration abandons Ukraine — and Beijing takes a tougher line with Russia — the way would be open for a European tilt towards China.

China will also sense new opportunities in Latin America as the continent bristles at America’s threats to Panama and Mexico. Aggressive US action against these countries — including military force — is distinctly possible, given Trump’s determination to regain control of the Panama Canal and to take on the Mexican drug cartels.

But Trump’s aggression towards Mexico is likely to be counter-productive. If tariffs push Mexico into a deep recession, the flow of desperate people heading to the US is only likely to increase — as is the power of the drug cartels, whose exports are not subject to tariffs.

Canada and Mexico are painfully aware that the odds are stacked against them in a trade war with the US. But they are compelled to retaliate. No national leader can afford to seem weak in the face of American bullying. And hitting back against Trump is probably the right strategic move. As one European foreign minister put it to me recently: “If Trump punches you in the face and you don’t punch back, he’ll just hit you again.”

Countries such as Britain and Japan that have not yet been singled out for tariffs might breathe a sigh of relief. But they are kidding themselves if they think keeping a low profile will buy them immunity. If Trump decides that his first tariff war has worked, he will certainly look for new targets.

Corporate America also needs to wake up and stop the sycophantic prating about the return of “animal spirits” to the US economy. What Trump is essentially offering America is economic autarky and the destruction of the western alliance. That would be an economic and strategic disaster for American business — and for the US as a whole.

gideon.rachman@ft.com