Tariffs as Siege Engines: The Long War on China and the Return of Neo‑Mercantilism

Inside Washington’s Neo‑Mercantilist Playbook: How U.S. Tariffs Aim to Slow China’s Rise and Re‑arm American Industry.

The Great Wave off Kanagawa (1831) by Katsushika Hokusai. Hokusai’s wave mirrors the U.S. deluge of tariffs, but waves eventually exhaust themselves against the shore.

When Tariffs Became the New Gunboats

In July 2018, the first tranche of Section 301 tariffs, a 25% duty, was imposed on $34 billion worth of Chinese goods. This move was treated like another flash of Trumpian theatrics. Five years on, the duties remain, some spiked to triple‑digit levels under Biden. So much for whimsy. If Washington’s policy talk is any guide, these tariffs were never a tantrum. And they are not a tantrum at this moment in time. They are the opening salvo of a calculated economic siege, one prepared well in advance of the second Trump administration.

As Raj Bhala in the Diplomat puts it, “Trade isn’t merely about trade, and tariffs aren’t just about tariffs … The goal is not efficiency or amity but national security.”¹ Replace national security with hegemonic insurance policy, and the point comes into focus: the United States is attempting to throttle China’s ascent not because Beijing is breaking WTO etiquette, but because, numbers in hand, Washington senses its own long technological, economic, and possibly cultural dominance stalling. Consequently, the hegemony is crumbling.

Think tank whitepapers can guide us through this maze of mercurial events: From the Council on Foreign Relations back in 2015 to The Marathon Initiative in 2024, the blueprint is hiding in plain sight: isolate Russia first, buy time to re‑arm and re‑shore (arms) industry, then pivot to an all‑out contest with China. Today’s tariff headlines are the fiscal‑policy wing of that project. Think of them as gunboats with Excel attachments.

Of course, underlying all of this tariff conundrum laid out in these whitepapers is the Western idea that other countries must necessarily behave like oneself: imperialist, expansionist, and aggressive. In the Euro-Western view, statecraft and hegemony building are understood as anarchy. Technological development must always be in the service of organized violence as part of statecraft (Listen to Jeffrey Sachs’s masterful explanation here).

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I. Sequencing 101: Exhaust the Lesser Foe, Reserve Strength for the Main Rival

The Trump administration’s tariff war against China didn’t emerge in a vacuum—it’s the economic arm of a premeditated strategy to "sequence" adversaries. The clearest articulation of this doctrine comes from The Marathon Initiative, a think tank co-founded in 2019 by Elbridge Colby (Architect of the Trump administration’s 2018 National Defense Strategy, which pivoted Pentagon focus to China. A leading voice on deterrence and Indo-Pacific strategy.) and Aaron Wess Mitchell (Assistant Secretary of State for Europe (2017–19), where he managed NATO relations and Russia policy. Ex-CEO of the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), specializing in transatlantic security.). Their 2024 paper, Strategic Sequencing, Revisited, argues that the U.S. must defeat Russia in Ukraine quickly to free resources for the "main opponent": China.

The Core Logic of Sequencing

“The optimal response to [multi-front war risk] would be a sequential strategy aimed at inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia in Ukraine on a faster timeline than China is prepared to move against Taiwan… [This] requires the United States to use the current window wisely to shore up Eastern Europe, broker a division-of-labor with allies, and reform the U.S. defense industrial base.”

The plan hinges on:

1. Proxy warfare: “Maximize our collective advantages against Russia by pursuing a strong but focused effort to inflict a proxy defeat on it in Ukraine.”

2. Industrial mobilization: Use the Ukraine war to “get the U.S. defense-industrial base, and those of our allies, up to par” for China.

3. Pivot to Asia: “This would allow us to pivot more attention to the Indo-Pacific.”

Economic Warfare as Sequencing’s Auxiliary

The paper explicitly ties industrial policy to grand strategy:

“The immediate emphasis should be producing munitions needed in Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan… expand multi-year contracts, waive regulatory obstacles, increase workforce training, and convert civilian industry to military production.”

This isn’t just about tanks—it’s about reshoring supply chains. Tariffs on Chinese EVs and export controls on semiconductors are economic flanking maneuvers to buy time for U.S. reindustrialization. In other words: “Form defensive trade groupings with major allies to prepare for sustained competition with China.”

The Stakes

The sequencing strategy gambles that a limited war in Europe can deter a larger one in Asia. But as the paper admits:

“War is expensive. No politician wants to propose cuts to pensions or education to buy tanks.”

Yet the alternative—failing to prepare—risks losing both theaters and their position as world hegemon. Therefore, everything is on the table:

“Sequencing remains America’s optimal strategy… but it only works if U.S. and allied leaders act with determination to get our armed forces, economies and societies ready for systemic war.”

Indeed, on the topic of Europe, the paper’s author becomes explicit, saying the quiet part out loud, a section I want to quote in full precisely because of the audacity:

We should be working behind the scenes to align the agendas of Ukraine and European allies into a unified stance on major questions that are likely to arise, including non-recognition of Russian territories in the East and ensuring that Western leverage, which is bound up in the rules and processes of numerous interagency processes across multiple allied states, can be utilized to maximum effect when the time comes.

We should be clear that this is not about “abandoningˮ Europe. Even once the United States has prioritized Asia, it will be a European power and continue to have compelling strategic reasons to keep certain kinds of high-end military hardware in that theater, both to augment European capabilities and to have a point dʼappui from which to project power to other places, including Asia.

On the one hand, it touts that the US is a European power and is not abandoning Europe per se, but yes, it is using it as a proxy. On the other hand, it states that the US is working behind the scenes to align European vassals with Ukraine.

The takeaway? The tariff war is an economic feint within a broader military-industrial playbook. Bleed Russia, retool the U.S., then confront Beijing.

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II. From Monroe Doctrine to Microchips: Neo‑Mercantilism Rebranded

Nine years before Trump’s first tariff salvo in 2015, a Council on Foreign Relations’ report by Robert Blackwill and Ashley Tellis advised the president to

“adopt new trade arrangements in Asia that exclude China; tighten export‑control regimes, build a larger, more active U.S. air and naval presence in the Asia‑Pacific, [and] more intimate U.S. strategic ties with Japan, Australia, the Republic of Korea, India, the countries of southeast Asia, and Taiwan.”³

That is the Monroe Doctrine writ in silicon and rare‑earth magnets.

Indeed, if we also highlight the following quote:

“In short, successive administrations have done much more cooperating with China than hedging, hoping that Beijing would gradually come to accept the United Statesʼ leading role in Asia despite all the evidence to the contrary, not least because cooperation was so much less costly in the short term than military, geoeconomic, and diplomatic hedging.”

We see an air of entitlement from the U.S. government. Who gave the U.S. the task of being the leader of Asia?

Fast‑forward to 2023, and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told a Brookings audience the United States isn’t “decoupling,” merely “de‑risking.” Under the chrome, the engine is the same: aggressive neo‑mercantilism.

Where the 1990s worshiped comparative advantage, the 2020s have rediscovered strategic denial. The aim is not to out‑compete on price but to starve rivals of critical inputs and then weaponize chokepoints.

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III. Tariffs Are Siege Engines, Not Band‑Aids

Peter Navarro—one of the architects of Trump’s trade wars—remains the intellectual godfather of the administration’s tariff strategy. His contribution to The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 lays bare the long-game logic: tariffs aren’t about protectionism but forced industrial reallocation.

“Offshoring suppresses wages and hollows out the defense industrial base … Tariffs function as a slow‑churning mechanism to ‘reshore’ industrial capacity.” (Project 2025, p. 767)

But is wage suppression the real reason, or is this more about the “defense industrial base”?

It is the latter. Navarro’s argument hinges on national security arbitrage: consumer goods may still flow from Asia, but critical sectors—semiconductors, rare earths, missile components—must be wrested from Chinese control. The document explicitly calls to “systematically reduce and eventually eliminate any U.S. dependence on Communist Chinese supply chains” (p. 797), naming pharmaceuticals, microelectronics, and military hardware as vulnerabilities.

The Irony of Corporate Autarky

The same firms that offshored production for profit now lobby for reshoring subsidies, having belatedly grasped the strategic trap of their arbitrage. Navarro’s 2025 blueprint frames this as existential:

“[Offshoring] raises the specter of a manufacturing and defense industrial base that, unlike our experience in World Wars I and II, will not be able to provide the weapons and matériel that would be needed should America enter another major world war or seek to assist a majorally like Europe, Japan, or Taiwan.” (p. 767)

The subtext is clear: Main Street’s inflation pain (from tariffs on cheap imports) is collateral damage in a campaign to resurrect a war-ready industrial core. This isn’t Keynesian stimulus for broad prosperity—it’s mercantilism for great-power conflict. Additionally, the corporations’ belated panic over strategic overreach—shipping tech and jobs to a rival—reveals how this isn’t about protecting workers, but salvaging hegemony.

Why This Matters: Bipartisan War Prep

This elite’s panic is a bipartisan consensus. Navarro’s 2025 vision mirrors Biden’s CHIPS Act and export controls. Although they differ in rhetoric, they are aligned in treating China as an existential threat. The unspoken goal: Decouple critical industries now, so the U.S. can wage (or supply) a major war later. The “China threat” is a monster of Wall Street’s making—offshoring tech, capital, and leverage for short-term gains. It is a self-inflicted decline and fall. Now, they scramble to weaponize the state to undo their own mistakes. Citing time as of utmost importance. Unfortunately, tariffs inflate prices on everyday goods, while subsidies flow to Lockheed and Intel. This results in austerity for consumers and socialism for defense contractors.

The takeaway: Tariffs are the economic front in a Cold War already underway—one in which both parties serve the same end, even as they bicker over the means.

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IV. Beijing’s Counter‑Script: Long Horizons, Loud Signals

“They plan their work and then they work their plan.” 

Thomas Jamarl’s interview with Asia‑Pacific analyst KJ Noh anchors the other half of the tariff story. Noh argues that Beijing reads every U.S. move—from Obama’s “pivot to Asia” to Trump’s tariff barrage—as points on a single, decades‑long containment curve.

“Certainly they’ve been preparing since the last Trump administration… but actually since 2011 when Obama declared the pivot to Asia and the TPP and Air‑Sea Battle.”

From “Rollback” to “Re‑Shore”

Washington’s plan has never changed; only the tactics do. WTO entry was a Trojan Horse, and the ‘Air‑Sea Battle’ preparations a strangulation script. When one patch fails, the coders push a new one—tariffs, CHIPS, whatever’s next:

• 1949‑1979 Rollback 1.0: Korea, Quemoy, Vietnam—classic containment.

• 1979‑2001 Engagement as Exhaustion: Let the market in, watch socialism wither.

• 2001‑2011 WTO Shock Therapy: Flood the zone with neoliberal rules; Beijing will buckle.

• 2011‑2016 Pivot + TPP + Air‑Sea Battle: Encircle with treaties and carriers.

• 2016‑2024 Tariffs & Tech Embargo: If you can’t sink the ship, starve the engine.

Each iteration assumes China is reactive, scrambling to catch up. But this is not the case. Not only is this not the case, but China has developed the capacity to withstand with greater resilience. Noh’s core claim is that Washington’s objective—“roll back China since 1949”¹—has remained constant, even as operational scripts mutate.

Belt & Road, Dual Circulation, Petroyuan—The Redundancy Suite

Belt & Road: Dry‑land rail and Arctic cables to outflank Malacca and Hormuz. The Belt & Road Initiative strings together freight rail, highways, and new fiber‑optic cables across Eurasia—and even looks to future shipping lanes along a melting Arctic. By moving goods overland (or via the northern sea route), China reduces its reliance on two maritime chokepoints the U.S. Navy could block in wartime: the Strait of Malacca (between Malaysia and Indonesia) and the Strait of Hormuz (gateway to Gulf oil).

Dual Circulation: Domestic demand + indigenous supply chains = tariff shock‑absorbers. “Dual circulation” is Beijing’s plan to rely more on its own consumers for growth (internal circulation) while upgrading home‑grown tech and components (internal supply chains). External trade still matters, but the core economy should be able to hum even if exports face tariffs or embargoes.

Petroyuan & CBDC pilots: Nip at dollar seigniorage, insure against SWIFT ejection. Petroyuan refers to oil contracts priced and settled in Chinese yuan instead of U.S. dollars—already used in some Saudi‑ and Russian‑sourced crude. A CBDC (central‑bank digital currency) is a programmable, blockchain‑based version of that yuan. Together they let Beijing settle big commodity trades outside the dollar‑dominated SWIFT banking system—and collect the fees (seigniorage) Washington currently earns when everyone uses dollars.

In short: rails and cables for routes, domestic markets for resilience, and a new digital‑currency oil market for financial escape velocity.

Ultimately, China has been preparing well: belt, road, and back‑up for every choke point. At the same time, it views the current U.S. tariffs as a chapter  in a book that started decades ago and whose story is still being written. Washington wages phase‑based contests; Beijing wages epochal ones. The clash is less a trade tiff than a test of which theory of time—sequential exhaustion or redundant resilience—will bend first. That foresight surfaces in everything from Made in China 2025 (tech self‑reliance) to massive grain stockpiles (food‑security firewall).

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V. Tariffs, Tangles, and the Drift toward Kinetics

What follows is a predictable ladder: tit‑for‑tat export bans on gallium, germanium, graphite; slowed customs clearances for Apple and Tesla; WTO panels gridlocked by mutual veto. It is a policy tennis match in which every rally deepens rather than relieves the tension.

The Marathon Initiative’s analyst Christopher Vassallo sees nails everywhere that need to be hammered down:“The absence of an effective economic option may force an American president to choose between a shooting war and humiliating capitulation,” he writes, adding that after the first Trump tariffs “U.S. and allied firms were not more likely to exit China, suggesting that foreign direct investment outflows do not ‘follow the flag.’”

In other words, corporate interdependence blunts sanctions while lobbying Washington to soften them, leaving the Oval Office with fewer levers each time the stakes rise.

“Counter‑intuitively, the immense scale of American and Chinese interdependence may increase the odds that a confrontation ends in a limited war. … The military option may be the path of least resistance in a Taiwan contingency.”

That risk is shaping force posture in real time. A 2024 Stimson Center study on Chinese missile threats to U.S. air bases warns that runway cratering could ground most traditional aircraft “in the first critical days—and even weeks—of a conflict.” The authors urge a radical pivot:

“This inside air force—forward‑postured air units tasked, trained, and equipped to operate in contested airspace—should be built around large numbers of attritable, mobile, and runway‑independent platforms rather than traditional fighters and bombers.”

Logistics must follow suit:

“Doing so requires more investment in pre‑positioned stockpiles and infrastructure improvements, including upgrades to civilian airfields in the Pacific; hardened fuel‑storage facilities; and dispersed storage facilities containing weapons, munitions, and equipment, including runway‑repair kits.”

Taken together, the picture is stark. Economic coercion is losing traction even as planners ready a battlefield where attritable drones, palletized munitions, and decoy hangars replace the Cold‑War template of big‑wing bombers and unbroken runways. Tariffs, once framed as leverage, now read like the overture to a play whose second act unfolds in the skies over the Taiwan Strait. We are watching a tit‑for‑tat that no longer ends at the water’s edge of commerce; it is already bleeding into operational orders and concrete poured on remote Pacific airstrips. The ladder’s next rung is not another tariff list—it is a logistics schedule.

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VI. Neo‑Mercantilism’s Domestic Irony

Even at home, the new tariff regime tells a conflicted story. Affordable housing for the incoming workforce is nowhere in the procurement tables. Unions cheer reshoring, yet find wage‑setting power undercut by right‑to‑work sunbelt states courting defense contractors.

The revival is selective—supply chains for the military‑industrial complex, not a holistic industrial policy. It is as though tariff architects copied FDR’s Arsenal of Democracy speech, then deleted every clause that mentioned child‑care centers or public housing.

Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (2000). The ‘hollowing out of American industry’ and the rise of militarism are the inevitable results of empire. Tariffs won’t reverse the decay.

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Closing Notes: Reading the Receipts Before the Ink Dries

Tariffs once served as fiscal footnotes; today, they are load‑bearing pillars of U.S. grand strategy. The blueprint is no longer secret. Sequencing doctrine, Project 2025, Indo-Pacific war games—all testify that Washington is building an economic siege architecture in slow motion.

I wish this were mere academic theatre. It isn’t. The proof is printed daily: chip subsidies here, outbound‑investment screens there, carrier strike groups drilling off Luzon. History is laying down tracks, and we’re aboard whether we booked a ticket or not.

I leave you with a modest call‑to‑action:

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The spectacle is unfolding either way. Best we keep our eyes open while the ink is still wet.

Stay safe, stay skeptical, and keep talking. Our collective future might just depend on it.

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