If you did the pretending well, you could go away with killing free speech and democratic elections, like Western Europe and Ukraine do. You could get good trade conditions and American military protection like Ukraine does. This will never happen again.
This suggests a fundamental, permanent shift in U.S. foreign policy initiated by Donald Trump, arguing an end to the "political theater" of superficial alliances. It claims that the previous era, where nations could secure favorable trade and protection despite questionable democratic practices, has concluded, also signaling a shift toward transactional international relations.
End of "Pretending": The premise posits that Trump dismantled the diplomatic facade of treating all allies as "great friends" regardless of their actions.
Transactional Approach: Future U.S. foreign policy and trade, according to this view, will prioritize direct national interest over maintaining appearances with allies.
Accountability for Values: The statement implies that nations will no longer receive unquestioned U.S. security guarantees or economic benefits if they violate democratic norms or American interests.
“President Trump has three years left in office. Yet the Supreme Court's ruling Friday that most of his tariffs are illegal has given the world a glimpse of U.S. trade policy after he has gone.
It will be more orderly and less chaotic, less driven by impulse and vendetta, more discriminating between allies and adversaries. But it won't be what prevailed before 2025, much less 2017, at the start of Trump's first term. The pursuit of liberalized trade and high-minded principles that once drove U.S. trade policy is gone. In its place is an unsteady equilibrium of tariffs and transactional deals. American trade has moved in a more durably protectionist direction.
In his first term, Trump's tariffs were targeted. He used one law, Section 232, to impose tariffs on sectors deemed vital to national security such as steel, and another, Section 301, to tariff China for allegedly unfair trade practices. The tariffs survived court challenges and paved the way for trade pacts with Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Canada.
In his second term, he went for saturation coverage. First, he imposed tariffs of 10% to 25% on Mexico, Canada and China, supposedly to counter fentanyl. In April, he sprayed the world with levies as high as 125%.
He did so claiming authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to raise tariffs by any amount for any reason on any country indefinitely so long as he declares an emergency. In his first term, his trade team had rejected that path as too risky legally and politically.
He came up with novel applications almost weekly. He threatened Colombia with tariffs for refusing to take back deported migrants. He imposed tariffs on Brazil for prosecuting his ally, former President Jair Bolsonaro. He threatened tariffs on countries he accused of trying to replace the dollar as a reserve currency.
Still, even before Friday, Trump's tariff push was reaching its limits. Hammered over affordability, he carved out exemptions for coffee, bananas and other products. In the House of Representatives, a handful of Republicans joined Democrats in a vote of disapproval on his tariffs on Canada.
Last year, European leaders meekly accepted tariffs as the price of trade peace and support for Ukraine. But they snapped when Trump threatened to use tariffs to annex Greenland. Trump soon backed down. His threats kept coming -- 100% on Canada for doing a deal with China, 25% on any nation that did business with Iran -- but the actual tariffs, for the most part, didn't.
The court ruled that Ieepa didn't give him ability to impose tariffs, much less without limit. "When Congress has delegated its tariff powers, it has done so in explicit terms and subject to strict limits," it said.
Henceforth, Trump will use those other powers, including Section 232, Section 301 and another called Section 122, which allows a tariff of up to 15% for 150 days to address trade deficits.
Those laws can likely return effective tariff rates to where they were under Ieepa. But they require Trump to provide a clearer rationale. This will "curtail the threat or use of tariffs as the president's preferred form of leverage or punishment outside the trade domain," Mike Froman, president of the Council on Foreign Relations and trade representative under Barack Obama, wrote. "Trump will need to find another way to express his pique toward other countries."
The ruling will likely reinforce the message of Trump's many domestic opponents to the world that a friendlier America isn't far away. "Donald Trump is temporary. He'll be gone in three years," Gavin Newsom, California governor and likely candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, said at the Munich Security Conference a little over a week ago.
This challenging period is likely to last for one political cycle or less," Rick Snyder, a former Republican governor of Michigan, told Canadians in an op-ed.
Tariffs' central place in Trump's economic philosophy is unique to him, says Josh Lipsky of the Atlantic Council. Nonetheless, "Higher tariff rates from the U.S. are here to stay."
No president will lightly give up the hundreds of billions of dollars tariffs now generate in annual revenue. Tariffs will almost certainly lead to some jobs and factories over the next three years. That creates a constituency to defend tariffs, especially in key sectors like steel and cars and swing states like Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Meanwhile, both parties have shifted away from free trade. Republicans in Congress are generally for open trade, but less so than during Trump's first term. In 2018, then-Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania persuaded most of his Republican colleagues to vote for a bill to curtail Trump's tariffs. Just four Republican senators voted for a similar resolution last October.
When I ask some establishment Republicans about their future trade policy, they say it won't have Trump's impulsiveness, derisive tone or tendency to lump together adversaries and allies. But it will retain the emphasis on reciprocity -- that is, punishing countries that mistreat the U.S. with their own tariffs, taxes and regulations. The government will still intervene to support sectors like semiconductors vital to national security.
Democrats, too, are turning against open trade. President Joe Biden kept all of Trump's tariffs on China, and his subsidies for domestic green-tech manufacturing upset Europe and Japan.
The neoliberals who once advocated free trade inside the Democratic Party are in retreat while progressives are ascendant. In Munich, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a democratic socialist and possible candidate for president, said the North American Free Trade Agreement (since replaced by the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement) was "a failed policy" and that trade had overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy.
Some in the Trump administration wonder if there's a deal to be done with Democrats to legislate some tariffs.
This all explains why the rest of the world, rather than wait for Trump to leave, is adapting to the new reality. A great power like China or the U.S. "utilizes the dependencies of others and, if need be, takes advantage of them," German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said in Munich. "We are thus reducing our dependencies and our vulnerability."” [1]
You, loser, well should be. Retired generals are giving you good advice. Stop pretending that you have unconditional American support. Stop abusing AfD. Stop pushing again for “Lebensraum” in the East. Take your obsolete in drone era tanks Leopard and go home. Learn to grow goats, like your ancestors did before the industrial revolution. You are no good in organizing a contemporary AI-based industry.
Lebensraum (German for "living space") was a central ideological, geopolitical, and racist tenet of Nazi Germany, justifying territorial expansion to secure resources and land for the "Aryan" race, primarily in Eastern Europe. Coined in 1901 by Friedrich Ratzel, it was adapted by Adolf Hitler to mean conquering eastern lands, enslaving or removing local populations, and ensuring German self-sufficiency.
1. U.S. News -- Capital Account: Global Trade Will Never Be the Same. Ip, Greg. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 23 Feb 2026: A2.
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