The Big Stick US Detox

Everything Old Is New Again

One of the most revealing updates to the 2025 trade war for me came from a CBC interview with Ontario’s representative in Washington, D.C., David Paterson. A participant at the March 13th meeting between Premier Doug Ford and Howard Lutnick, the forever diplomat Paterson described the meeting as a necessary fleshing out and confirmation of suspected motivations.

Born from Ford’s trade war theatrics, threatening to impose a 25% surcharge on energy exports to three northern U.S. states along the Ontario border, the post‑haste trip to Washington demonstrated how much bluster was needed to get the Trump administration’s attention. To some degree, Paterson paints the whole affair as a much‑needed win for Ford and Canada. It helped secure a near‑immediate, cards‑on‑the‑table talk, and an all‑smiles, post‑meeting Ford was most likely honest when he called the meeting constructive. At minimum, it assuaged fears that last week’s Washington‑bound Canadian politicians would be stonewalled.

Bottom line, tariffs will be coming on April 2nd, and the U.S. will be a tariffing country across the board, full stop, period. Paterson recounts the Trump admin’s plans for the restructuring of global trade and states it plainly: like it or not, these are their intentions, and at least we now know why.

A complement to Paterson’s recount of Ford and Lutnick’s Washington meeting, Gillian Tett’s interview with Ezra Klein expands further upon the U.S.’s tariff‑setting agenda. Tett, an author, journalist, anthropologist, and chair of the editorial board for the Financial Times, clearly articulates the motivations and questionable methods behind Trump’s tariff obsession. Pulling from the published work of Peter Navarro, Scott Bessent, and Stephen Miran (Trump’s economic advisers), Tett explains this redraw of the global trade order, revealing not so much a new idea as a remix of an old one.

The tariff, tragic child of the Great Depression, has been resurrected at the hands of Trump. And he is taking a big gamble involving the world’s largest economy. It is also the world’s largest superpower militarily and has begun to question why the two should never meet. This “new world order” is really one born of a regressive logic that directly ties trade to defence. It is a step back into a might‑is‑right world and the conceptual launch pad for the Great U.S. Shakedown.

In Trump’s materialist view everyone has a price, does every country? Sure many smaller nations will have little bargaining power when tariffs come into play.

New Rules

The U.S. will be a tariffing country, full stop, come April 2nd, 2025. Unlike its former approach, wherein military power wore a tacit cover of protecting trade routes and furthering the expansion of democracy and capitalism, this time the U.S. steers into a pay‑to‑play scheme, wherein tariffs are a flat rate of admission to the U.S. market. Whether they are high, low, or non‑existent depends on how well a country plays ball with U.S. demands.

Alliances are old news. NATO has become expendable too, because allies can be turned into vassals under the great protectorate of the U.S. To Trump, it is payback time for the U.S.’s post–World War II generosity and military might. He throws down the “you need us more than we need you” gauntlet on every front, from global trade to conflict zones. The word “interdependence” has never crossed his mind. This is the man, after all, who only heard of “groceries” very recently. Interdependence, which sums up the entire closed‑system planet, is undoubtedly a word well outside his vocabulary, literally and figuratively.

Unsurprisingly, countries, including all former allies, caught up in the switcheroo are apt to see this as coercion. Compounded with Trump’s affection for Putin, disparaging remarks about Ukraine and Zelensky, plus his new fixation on annexing Greenland and Canada, this has given everyone cause to step back and try to determine how crazy or compromised the 47th U.S. president really is, and just how much they can tolerate.

We have all been here before in our collective memory, where some form of “great powers” decides things for the rest. It is a realpolitik world we thought had seen its deathbed at the end of the Cold War. Conflict zones since then have become testing grounds in greater‑power proxy battles with the stated aim of stopping tyrannical or communist advances. But these were bereft of obvious expansionist aspirations from democratic nations. They were the “good guys.” “Axis of evil”–type pursuits were wholly “un‑American” to those who believed in the U.S.’s free democratic world promise.

Real Politik Made Transparent

In the latter half of the twentieth century, the U.S. mostly strived for influence, not outright ownership. In 2025, however, the U.S. under Trump has become much more mask‑off with its imperialist desires. His supporters claim it is just realpolitik made transparent. He says the unspoken part out loud, and we are now just seeing how the political sausage gets made. To others, it is more a brutal death of diplomacy at the hands of a gauche power flex.

Now, with Trump’s talk of claiming the Panama Canal and Greenland, and annexing Canada, the American empire leans into unbridled empire‑building notions and “manifest destiny.” At the same time, Elon Musk’s DOGE has taken an axe to numerous governmental departments and contracts, laying off thousands of federal workers and fuelling doubts that the administration can maintain institutional integrity while keeping the nation’s domestic needs afloat. There is neither the budget nor the bandwidth in Washington for invading or absorbing other countries. The threats are ominous nonetheless and continue to blur the line in the public’s eye between master negotiator and mad king.

Bluffs Or Bargaining Chips

Within Klein’s interview, Tett’s background as an anthropologist brought valuable insight into understanding the geopolitical and economic issues Trump and his team claim they are addressing. She brings their mercantilist perspective into clear view. Tariffs can do a lot of things for the U.S. They can undoubtedly fully lean into their reclaimed might‑is‑right modus operandi. How much smaller countries will endure has yet to be determined.

Are tariffs the cure‑all negotiating tool for the U.S.? Can even Trump decide? His haphazard approach has led to more chaos and uncertainty than anything else so far. One day, he has bet the farm and future of America on them paying for his tax cuts; the next day, they are bargaining chips to build up border control; and the next, they are about how many U.S. banks are in Canada. The word of the year is undoubtedly “uncertainty,” and that is where everybody lives now, in economic freeze‑frame. Tariffs are coming, we know, but what they will yield is still a high‑stakes unknown.

In Trump’s materialist view, everyone has a price; does every country? Sure, many smaller nations will have little bargaining power when tariffs come into play. Their compliance will come at a cost, however. For everyone caught in a bully’s scheme, goodwill quickly runs dry, as does generosity of spirit and cooperation. Compliance through coercion becomes a yoke to throw off at the soonest opportunity.

Donald Trump may be retiring the former speak‑softly‑and‑carry‑a‑big‑stick U.S. geopolitical approach, but the new just‑swing‑a‑big‑stick with minimal forethought is more likely to lead it down a path of isolation, as opposed to reasserting any type of “greatness.” As the old, but ultimately brief, U.S.‑backed unipolar world order crumbles, one cannot help but feel that this will herald a much less fruitful and more dangerous era, clamouring in on the great refrain, “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”