The big tariff gamble with the world’s biggest economy is a gamble so big that only the US could or would even try to pull it off. It has a regressive logic that reveals their “new world order” really is only a resurrection of an old one that directly links trade to defence, putting us on the threshold of the incoming Great US Shakedown.

The US will be a tariffing country full-stop come April 2nd 2025. Unlike its former approach, where in military power was employed to protect trade routes and further the expansion of democracy and capitalism, this time the US steers into a pay-to-play scheme where in tariffs are a flat rate of admission to the US market. Be they high, low, or no is up to how well a country plays ball with US demands.

Alliances are old news. NATO is seen as expendable too because allies can be turned into vassals under the great protectorate of the US. To Trump it’s payback time for the US’s post World War 2 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 out of his vocabulary, literally and figuratively.

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

Summarized by Singapore’s defence minister in Munich, the US “has changed from liberator to great disruptor to a landlord seeking rent”

We’ve all been here before in our collective memory where some form of “great powers” decide things for the rest. It is a realpolitik of this world we thought had been on its death bed since the end of the Cold War. Conflict zones since then have often been seen as proxy battles with aims of stopping tyrannical or communist advancements, but bereft of expansionist aspirations for democratic nations. Those were “axis of evil” type pursuits, and for those who embraced the US’s free democratic world promise, it was wholly “unAmerican.”

In the later half of the twentieth century, the US mostly strived for influence not outright ownership. In 2025, however, the US under Trump has become much more mask-off with its imperialist desires. His supporters claim it’s just realpolitik transparent. He says the unspoken part out-loud, and we’re 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, 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, fuelling doubts the administration can maintain institutional integrity while keeping the nation’s domestic needs afloat. There is neither the budget nor 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.

Why Klein’s interview with Tett was so valuable is her background as an anthropologist brought an insightful lens to understand the geopolitical and economic issues Trump and team are trying to address. She brings their mercantilist perspective into clear view. Tariffs can do a lot of things for the US, and as they fully lean into their might-is-right modus-operandi, it has yet to be determined how much smaller countries will endure.

Are tariffs the cure-all negotiating tool for the US? 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 about how many US 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 US geo-political approach, but the new just-swing-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 US-backed unipolar world order crumbles, one can’t help but feel that this will herald in a much less fruitful and more dangerous era of, “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”