So far as I am aware, I’m the first person to raise this theory as a possibility. If I’m onto something, you can be sure I’ll not be the last.

Most of the conversation about Trump and the tariffs he’s been introducing have centered on questions about jobs, economics and trade imbalances.

But what if there’s ANOTHER objective hidden in plain sight? One with big enough ambitions that it would put a smile on Old Reagan’s face, if he were here to see it?

Remember Ronald Reagan in the Cold War? He defied all of his critics with his simple refutation of the prevailing ‘Detente’ doctrine of political coexistence with the Soviets by saying ‘we win they lose’.

In forcing the issue, Reagan successfully de-fanged our greatest political foe and ushered in an era where, for the first time since WWII, nobody lived in any real fear that our sons would be shipped off to WWIII or that all the world might face the hardships of a Nuclear Winter.

How did he do it? Whatever other factors you might want to tie into the fall of the Soviet Union, at least PART of that formula was the economic ruination of the USSR… in the ultimate service of persuing peace.

Is Trump Being Reagan-esqe here?

Enduring peace as an end goal

Despite Reagan’s reputation as a cowboy, he was strongly interested in establishing a lasting peace, as evidenced in his conversations with Gorbachev. Trump shares some of those characteristics.

For example:

Trump is unashamedly averse to anything that might edge the world closer to nuclear conflict. This is most evident in the Ukraine negotiations, in which he is measured in his responses to Russia, noting they are a nuclear-capable opponent. See also: North Korea.

This instinct is not mere self-preservation. His preference for non-violent and limited engagement in hitting nation states while actively pushing for peace deals between hostile nations is self-evident.

He’s happy to drop a MOAB on a terror camp in Afghanistan, with no civilians in sight, ordered a limited strike to cripple an air force that had reportedly dropped chemical weapons on civilian targets, but interestingly, chose NOT to escalate militarily against Iran when less lethal options like economic sanctions or cyber warfare could get the point across as effectively. Even Russia was opposed not by force, but by blocking the completion of the Nordstream pipeline… which Joe Biden and the Democrats promptly reinstated once Trump left office.

Where nations are already in conflict, Trump’s team brought an olive branch — first bringing peace to two countries that had been hostile since the Clinton administration (Serbia and Kosovo), besides the countries involved in the Abraham Accords: Israel, UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, Morocco.

Reagan treated serious threats seriously

One of the reasons Reagan’s critics thought he was some kind of a renegade cowboy stemmed from his aggressive defense spending. If he did not think Russia was a threat worth taking seriously, he would have never have prioritized the military spending that helped spend Russia into insolvency.

Time has changed, and the geopolitical threats Trump faces are not the same we saw in Reagan’s day.

Russia is still around, and a regional threat to Europe, but it has neither the will nor the ability to chase meaningful global ambitions. There are a couple of rogue nuclear powers or would-be nuclear powers that need to be kept on a short leash. There are some terror groups that need to be put in their place, and some criminal cartels that could use a good smack. But none of those are our chief rival. That rival would be China.

And China is on the move. Commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party of China, Xi announced his plans to ‘reunify’ China, and insisted that Christian Churches echo his dogma… or else. That speech made openly expansionistic threats.

Another Chinese national took the threats further still, making them personal to USA (from a Dec 2020 story in ClashDailly):

It turns out the China is going to overtake the United States in 2027. […] In the global economy, China stands out. We are ahead of schedule in terms of overtaking the United States. There will be no problem reaching this goal in 2027. The U.S. will not survive.[…]In any case, China’s development cannot be resisted or stopped. As long as one thing doesn’t happen. As long as China doesn’t produce a Gorbachev who would mess up China’s own internal affairs and cause China to disintegrate.

They see the seizure by force of Taiwan as a foregone conclusion.

Reagan used unconventional tools to achieve his goals

The strategic defense initiative was seen as a hairbrain idea mocked with derisive names like ‘Star Wars’… but it became the seed for highly-successful defense systems currently employed by Israel.

It became just one part of an arms race with Russia that was (ironically) the peace-through-strengh lever that led to the destruction of the Soviet empire

If you notice, even the Chinese sociologist above was conscious of the Gorbachev factor… a reference to a Communist superpower that Uncle Sam made to cry ‘uncle’ in times past.

Is Trump using Tariffs as a lever against China in the same way that Reagan used the American economy to do the same thing?

A two-pronged approach

There’s both an offensive and a defensive consideration to what Trump is doing economically. The obvious one that everyone has been talking about so far involves re-shoring.

For one thing, COVID’s impact on just-in-time manufacturing supply chains showed a glaring weakness in having so many of our critical manufacturing flow through a single country with some openly hostile ambitions.

Defensive goals

One of the clear benefits of these tariffs is the incentives are being rebalanced in favor of re-shoring or near-shoring manufacturing. The more we see companies set up shop in American towns and cities, the less reliant we are on the whims of foreign countries for the goods and services we depend on.

Better yet, some of the jobs that fled from the US are returning again, with every job representing new opportunities for an American family.

This makes us less susceptible to economic shocks and supply chain disruptions if we see another situation like 2020 where entire countries were put on lockdown for one reason or another. It also gives some domestic options in the event of a trade war (or worse) erupting with one of our near-peer competitors.

Non-Military ‘Offensive’ Goals

China has been involved in ‘grey’ warfare against other nations for decades. Much of their tech has been either reverse-engineered or straight-up stolen. The CCP has any number of subversive operations happening around the world at a given time ranging from information-gathering to influence peddling to clandestine police operations set up in sovereign nations NOT named China.

It’s only natural that nations with any self-respect at all would push back. And Trump may have happened on a way that can really hit China where it hurts.

The secret to China’s success has been to undercut the opposition, choke out rivals with sometimes predatory practices and become a de facto monopoly, giving the government leverage points against rival nations in their control of anything from manufacturing and textiles, to pharmacology, to refined materials from mines required for high-tech manufacturing.

Having a stranglehold on such things means you could win a conflict without firing a shot. Imagine a conversation like, ‘Oh, you don’t like China’s Taiwan policy’? Maybe you don’t like China’s antibiotics, either.’

They have been this ruthless with their own people, what would prevent them from doing so with the rest of the world?

This is where the tariffs come into play. First off, everyone gets a reciprocal tariff, so China cannot claim to be ‘singled out’.  If they get upset about the policy, there is no plausible reason to invoke it as a casus belli. There are real, specific, and plausible ways that Trump can justify the tariffs set against China as ‘reciprocal’. 

But… it’s more than that.

China’s economy wasn’t exactly on solid ground lately, especially as seen in stories like the Evergrande liquidation and others like it.

What do tariffs do?

A couple of things:

Wringing money out of China’s economy with tariffs diverts it from going into other things… including building its war machine, or financing subversive acts and spycraft abroad. At the time of this writing, news stories are circulating about China’s markets dropping by the largest margin since the crash in 2008, down approximately 9%.

A centralized economy like China’s is only as strong as the financial situation of the government that pays for it. If there’s a hole blown in its economy, they are forced to make a choice between paying their people or paying for their military expansion.

A China-specific tariff higher than what is set on other nations changes the incentive structures for going to China for value-added on refining raw materials into more advanced and lucrative components of manufacturing, industry, high tech, or even military applications. It could de-couple some of the more pragmatic countries in the world or force them to choose between their side and ours.

Other rivals (India, perhaps) could use the difference in tariff rates to swoop in and out-compete with China for things like textiles, possibly resetting some part of the economic balance within the region.

China will look for ways to respond, obviously. Invoking tariffs of their own, leverage the supply chain issues that caused havoc in COVID, and any number of other tricks Xi might have up his sleeve. But Trump is confident in the American economic engine being resilient enough to outlast whatever Xi might throw at it.

Let’s say the economic push-pull is strong enough to chip away at China’s monopolies AND weaken the economy that drives China’s war machine. In that case, they may be forced to rethink their designs on swallowing up their neighbors.

China might cry ‘uncle’ to Uncle Sam.

All without anyone firing a shot.

As Reagan might say, ‘Peace Through Strength’.