Tariffs are not policy. They are performance—symbols—flags planted in the wreckage of a global order Trump and his far-right allies are intentionally dismantling. Anyone still thinking this is about protecting American steelworkers or rebalancing trade with China hasn't been paying attention—or worse, is clinging to the fairy tale that this movement is tethered to any rational economic theory.
The truth is far more bleak. Trump's tariffs are just the on-ramp to something far more dangerous: the construction of an anti-global, anti-liberal, post-Enlightenment world system. The endgame isn't economic prosperity; it's ideological severance. Strategic decoupling from modernity itself.