THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JUNE 2025 31 This is an opportunity to educate foreign interlocutors on the general nature of the U.S. balance of powers. ond, the State Department needs to establish a unified, cloudbased solution to the process of reporting back to policymakers. Reordering Global Trade Since 2016 tariffs have been used by two successive administrations in an increasingly aggressive manner to restrict imports and protect favored sectors. And now the Trump administration has ratcheted up the use of tariffs so dramatically that it is fair to see it as an attempt at a wholesale reordering of global trade. In some cases, countries may make a deliberate decision, at least initially, to seek to embrace the U.S. and offer more trade and investment concessions. In many other cases, countries may seek to retaliate in subtle ways or pivot to other foreign patrons. U.S. implementation of tariffs may well come as a shock to a host country. It is worth noting here that the benefits of soft power inherent in the post–World War II U.S. leadership of trade liberalization meant that many countries had nearly tariff-free access to the world’s richest consumer base for decades. That, in turn, has resulted in hundreds of millions of people globally being lifted out of poverty—primarily in China, which has turned into a global export powerhouse, but also in smaller countries like Bangladesh, where women once reliant on subsistence agriculture can now earn a living making T-shirts for companies like Nike. (Such jobs also allow the U.S. government—and companies like Nike that are concerned with reputational risk— to insist on better labor conditions.) More obvious examples are the U.S. appetite for goods like coffee and bananas, neither of which can be grown naturally in the continental United States. The U.S. may have had mixed motives in having outsourced most labor-intensive activities—companies, after all, seek to maximize profits in large part by minimizing their cost of manufacture—but the results of poverty alleviation were undeniably historic. And U.S. policymakers could naturally claim some moral global leadership by facilitating poverty alleviation. Buying from the world may have been the U.S.’s most impressive and enduring foreign aid program, even at the cost of rapid and concentrated job dislocation domestically. It is precisely the length and stability of this former U.S. position—from World War II to 2016—that is now creating the conditions for a rapid chill in bilateral and regional attitudes toward the U.S. Consider how rapidly the situation has changed. In 2011 the U.S. Senate ratified free trade agreements with South Korea, Panama, and Colombia. All three had national security dimensions. Just four years later, two extraordinary economic and security trade agreements had been negotiated and were all but ready to be ratified by the Senate—the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Both would have created major regional trading blocks and, not coincidentally, would have checked China’s growth and influence. However, both leading presidential candidates in 2016 ran in opposition to implementing them—in large part reflecting voters’ sentiment that too many jobs were being lost to outsourcing. Dealing with Uncertainty Today’s situation puts U.S. diplomats in a tricky position for the simple reason that the implementation of many of the new tariffs has been unstable, with sudden escalations and reversals. U.S. diplomats will need to articulate and defend the shifting policies on tariffs to the host country government, the public, and key business leaders. This is an opportunity to educate foreign interlocutors on the general nature of the U.S. balance of powers. It is not incorrect, for instance, to note that the Constitution largely gives Congress the authority to impose tariffs—and that Congress, over time, has authorized the executive branch to deploy certain processes to determine if tariffs, generally narrowly scoped, are appropriate to apply. By design, there is a tension between Congress and the executive branch in determining and executing tariff policies. And the Supreme Court has something to say in its judicial review of the constitutionality of any action. At the time of this writing, in mid-April, the administration’s imposition of sweeping tariffs is being challenged by a U.S. consumer goods company represented, quite ably, by Mark Chenoweth and his team at the New Civil Liberties Alliance. The lawsuit charges that the administration is exceeding their authority by imposing tariffs on the basis of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). When this case reaches the Supreme Court, a ruling may well result in an annulment of these tariffs. U.S. diplomats should feel comfortable explaining to their foreign contacts that the Supreme Court’s decision is binding on the administration. And given the economic impact of the tariffs on China in particular, which, as of the date of this draft, are at approximately 150 percent, the
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy ODIyMDU=