Over the past 20 years, the United States has built the weapons of unprecedented economic safety tools that underpinned the US foreign policy.
Republican and Democrat administrations have developed a common understanding of the world and the best way to pursue American interests. The Economic Security Authority worked throughout the administration and gradually developed the grand ambitions of a global order based on financial sanctions, export controls and the development of critical technologies. Each new administration encouraged it to build economic weapons it inherited from the last, and to continue to build the structure of American economic power.
We are trying to find out what happens when these structures are controlled by destructive management, and what happens when we inherit weapons without the sense of responsibility that involves them.
The new Trump administration still has traditional economic security technocrats, but they are mere factions and are competing against others. This jockey and President Trump’s social media beef is social media beef with other countries, so the country is relying on us as our power machinery is beginning to rust from within. You may be seeing the beginning of a world that unleashes yourself from.
Before they left the White House, Joe Biden people clearly wanted to shape the Trump administration’s agenda. Just six days before Trump took office, the Biden administration published plans to order America’s global AI. Layout a complex plan to solidify US control over cutting-edge AI
But then Trump has shown his own approach to policy and global issues. Colombia is one of the closest Latin American allies in America. When he refused to accept Decorty’s two military aircraft, Trump announced that he would impose full “financial, banking, financial” sanctions and 50% tariffs on all Colombian products within a week. The Colombian president responded with his own online tirade. A face-saving compromise ended the spat. There have been decades of understanding of policy. In was a 190-word post about Truth Social.
Other countries will certainly pay attention. In the short term, they may want to give Trump what he wants. In the long run, they will have every reason to separate themselves from America, which seems willing to crush the economy of its allies on a whim. Trump’s fiery looked more like 19th century gunboat diplomacy than strategic calculations.
But the problem isn’t just Trump’s playing the Ricochets through a policy position like a ball on the roulette wheel. His administration is set to become a casino where crypto gamblers, high-tech oligarchs and Wall Street opportunists compete with the Security Hawks.
US policy relies on the pockets of wheels where Trump rests. These different factions have different understandings of American interests. Should the country rely on cryptographic technology designed to resist government control? Should AI and semiconductor export restrictions be relaxed or strengthened? Should we make a handy bargain in a wealthy, authoritarian regime?
At least some of these will quickly depart from past security consensus. Previously, Democrats and Republicans fought hard over many policy questions, both agreed that national interests rely on building power over global finance and technology.
After the September 11 attack, members of both parties realized that largely unregulated global financial equipment poses a threat to America’s security. The US dollar underpins a system that allows terrorists and fraudulent countries like North Korea to easily send and receive money across borders.
The Treasury began to turn the dollar into a global system of power, deploying sanctions, blocking people, banks and, ultimately, the entire country. It took a while to focus on technology, but with the second Obama administration, the Department of Commerce’s Industrial Security Bureau was used not only for isolated countries, including Iran, but also for foreign companies like China. They had developed possible export controls and related measures. ZTE downplayed US rules while relying on US technology.
Few outsiders paid attention to what appeared to be the mysterious realm of boring technology. Only experts understand that the US is slowly reshaping the world economy around its security interests, and actively builds up actions to build a vast machinery of coercion. Masu.
When Trump first came to power in 2017, the system didn’t change as much as he expected. The threat of his past sanctions on his allies has made America’s economic strength far more visible and controversial. However, Trump regularly finds himself unhappy with his senior officials. He often hampered actions that he feared to undermine American interests.
Mid-level officials have led policies through Trump’s tweetstorm, and their improvisation has even led to the discovery of new economic weapons. Trump’s desire to encourage trade concessions led to increased export controls so that it could be used against foreign companies that are indirectly linked to the US economy.
When Biden came to power, his officials used these measures against Russia and China. Biden’s AI plan relies on the powers that Trump invented by the Commerce Department.
These 20 years of continuity are set to end. It is already clear that Trump will have fewer restrictions in his second term. In 2020, he issued an executive order effectively banning Tiktok as a threat to national security. Now it appears he wants to make a deal that keeps Tiktok alive (he changed his mind around the time he spoke with Jeff Yass, a leading investor in Tiktok’s parent company, but he met (I deny that we discussed Tiktok in).
Trump’s love affair with Crypto sits awkwardly with enthusiasm for American power. He promised to make cryptography a priority in national policy, and even issued his own crypto memo coin. He appointed crypto investor David Sachs to “Crypto and AI czar” and was appointed Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
However, Crypto’s profits are at odds with the US financial and technical powers. Crypto promises that it will make it easier for fraudulent countries to move money across borders and that technical decentralization can provide an alternative to government powers. Traditional banks are concerned about the possibility of fallout from Crypto Services’ irrational approach to implementing money laundering and financial sanctions.
There is a similar battle over semiconductors and AI. The new AI administration’s National Security Hawk wants to keep AI in America’s grasp and limit foreigners’ access to powerful semiconductors. However, AI companies and semiconductor producers are investing early in their influence. They want to pay back a huge amount of financial bets on data centers and manufacturing facilities.
AI companies are often optimistic about export restrictions (which undermine Chinese competitors), and, in contrast, want fewer regulations and restrictions on AI semiconductor companies, allowing them to access global markets. It has been significantly limited.
Mid-level officials who have been running economic security machines for a long time must balance these competing demands. Sometimes it’s likely that President Trump will require them to offer him to embrace his enemies. This means they need to maintain and build a machine for American sanctions and export control.
The president will also want to ensure that these officials are out of the way of crypto, AI, or other influential economic interests.
Sometimes his goals may coincide with national security interests. Trump himself has been blocking whether Ukraine could become part of Russia, but some of his advisors clearly have increased sanctions pressure on Moscow and made more concessions to Ukraine They hope to narrow down their peace agreement to accept it.
But overall, this administration will mercilessly undermine America’s economic security. Sanctions and other measures may be applied indiscriminately to countries, organizations, and individuals that displease the president. Those who fear Trump’s whims and rage will have every reason to separate themselves from their connections with the US to limit damage.
The country and business will either pay his respects, pretend or pretend to or pretend to Trump to avoid tariffs, sanctions and export controls. But they also know that the United States is no longer entirely reliable. They can be hurt not only by Trump’s intentional actions, but also by diplomatic mistakes that multiply as American administrative states withered from within. As one-way replaces two-sided relationships in a multilateral world, we may see the erosion of the markets that underpin the strength of the US. Global business diversifies its supply chain and applies the same risk calculations to the US exposure that once applied to its transactions with Tinpot Kleptocrats.
American enemies have long found it difficult to persuade American allies to flaws from the American economic network. Trump’s second term changed the calculations. Now, even European allies are talking about quietly approaching China. It is becoming increasingly difficult to see the benefits they can make from their connections with the US, and it is becoming easier to see the costs.
Johns Hopkins’ Henry J. Farrell and Georgetown’s Abraham L. Newman are professors of international affairs and authors of “The Underground Empire: How America Weaponed the World Economy.”
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