{"id":161309,"date":"2025-08-20T06:17:59","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T06:17:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/trumps-tariffs-replace-diplomacy-as-other-us-tools-of-statecraft-are-discarded-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2025-08-20T06:17:59","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T06:17:59","slug":"trumps-tariffs-replace-diplomacy-as-other-us-tools-of-statecraft-are-discarded-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/trumps-tariffs-replace-diplomacy-as-other-us-tools-of-statecraft-are-discarded-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s tariffs replace diplomacy as other US tools of statecraft are discarded – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Measures meant to rebalance America\u2019s economy are wielded instead against the likes of Canada, India and Brazil \u2018to compel loyalty to the president\u2019
On the campaign trail, Donald Trump<\/a> pledged to use tariffs to revitalise American industry, bringing jobs home and helping to make America great again. But more than six months into his administration, experts say the president\u2019s trade war is increasingly being wielded as a political cudgel, in lieu of more traditional forms of diplomacy.
The president\u2019s current target, India<\/a>, has been unable to reach a trade agreement, and Trump appears ready to follow through with his threat to impose a further 25% tariff on Delhi \u2013 bringing the total to 50% \u2013 the joint highest levy on any country, along with Brazil.
It is a whiplash-inducing turnaround from a few months ago<\/a>, when the newly minted Trump administration seemed intent on continuing a years-long bipartisan effort to deepen ties with India as a geopolitical counterweight to China. It\u2019s part of a trend that highlights how tariffs are used as threats against countries perceived to be recalcitrant. Rather than a tool of economic coercion, Trump instead wields tariffs as a political weapon.
Five rounds of trade talks between the two sides have brought India no closer to conceding to US demands that it open up its vast agriculture and dairy sectors. Negotiations planned for early next week have been abruptly called off, as India\u2019s prime minister, Narendra Modi, grapples with Trump\u2019s demand that India cease to buy oil from Russia; sales that the US says are helping to fuel Vladimir Putin\u2019s war against Ukraine.
The demand \u2013 that India wean itself off the Russian oil, which accounts for about 35% of its total supply \u2013 sits at odds with the original stated purpose of Trump\u2019s tariff regime: to bring manufacturing back to the US and rebalance trade deficits.
\u201cTariffs have a very specific purpose of protecting domestic industry from competition,\u201d says Dr Stuart Rollo from the Centre for International Security Studies at the University of Sydney. \u201cThat\u2019s not really what this is about \u2026 It\u2019s kind of pivoted to a tool of geopolitical compulsion.\u201d
Trump himself has come to admit this. Along with the threatened additional 25% tariff on India<\/a> in retaliation for continuing to purchase Russian oil, the president has tied Canada\u2019s 35% tariff to its recognition of Palestinian statehood.
In the case of Brazil, which has a rare trade surplus with the US, meaning it buys more than it sells, Trump has said<\/a> that the huge 50% tariff is due to the trial of his political ally, Jair Bolsonaro, who is charged with plotting a military coup after he lost the 2022 presidential election.
The president\u2019s top trade adviser, Peter Navarro, even has a new term for these explicitly political trade threats: \u201cnational security tariffs<\/a>\u201d.
The Democratic senator Chris Murphy put it more bluntly, writing in the Financial Times<\/a> in April that the tariffs are not designed as economic policy but as a \u201cmeans to compel loyalty to the president\u201d.
Rollo says: \u201cIt\u2019s a way of the United States to compel as much of the world as possible into realignment with its global leadership at a time when its actual weight and gravity is diminishing.\u201d
In some ways, this is not new; the Biden administration used trade restrictions to limit China\u2019s access to state-of-the-art semiconductors<\/a> at a time of heated geopolitical tensions.
But Devashish Mitra, a professor of economics at Syracuse University<\/a>, says that for many in India, the threat faced over Russian oil purchases seems incoherent, ill thought out, and could push India closer to China.
\u201cIndia did consider the US an ally,\u201d says Mitra. \u201cIt was a country that the US was relying on as a counter to China in that region. So it had a huge geopolitical importance, but it doesn\u2019t seem like Trump values any of that.\u201d
This week, China\u2019s foreign minister has been in Delhi for talks, and Modi is expected in Shanghai at the end of the month, his first visit in seven years. It\u2019s a part of a recent pattern of tightening relations between the Brics countries \u2013 Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, which make up 40% of global GDP \u2013 that experts say is a response to Trump\u2019s aggressive trade policies.
For future US administrations, winning back the trust of some of these countries could be difficult, as Trump\u2019s escalating trade war comes at the same time as his administration dismantles its instruments of global statecraft. From mass firings at the state department<\/a> to the slashing of foreign assistance programmes at USAID<\/a>, America\u2019s diplomatic toolbox is vastly diminished.
Tariffs have \u201ccome to replace diplomacy\u201d, says Rollo.
And so with his attention divided between crises at home and abroad, the president has left himself armed with only a hammer, with every global flashpoint looking to him like a nail.<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Measures meant to rebalance America\u2019s economy are wielded instead against the likes of Canada, India and Brazil \u2018to compel loyalty to the president\u2019On the campaign trail, Donald Trump pledged to use tariffs to revitalise American industry, bringing jobs home and helping to make America great again. But more than six months into his administration, experts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":161310,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-161309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}