TRUMP’S 90-day tariff reprieve spells 90 days of geopolitical turbulence, US bullying and the threat of war.

All three have been constant features of the period of US “unipolar” power, especially since the beginning of what even US presidents have termed the “forever wars.” But Trump’s aggression is global.

That is not changed by the 90-day pause on tariffs (above a 10 per cent base line) on everyone except China, on whose products tariffs are now being hiked well above 100 per cent.

Yes, it identifies China as his main target. Yes, it is an affronted response to the one big country which has met his threats with defiance.

But the escalation against China and suspension — not removal — of threatened tariffs elsewhere are part of the same strategy. Trump is trying to browbeat the world into siding with the United States against China in a conflict the US, not China, has decided on. 

Successive US governments have slapped sanctions (which, not being UN-authorised, have no international legal standing) on Chinese products.

But the universal tariff threat ratchets up the pressure. Align with our demands, the US says, or we have already identified the level of economic pain we are going to inflict on you.

Those demands are intended to force all markets open to whatever the US wants. Economist Michael Roberts points to the catch-all list of supposedly unfair practices the US objects to, including “currency manipulation, ‘opaque’ licensing, ‘discriminatory’ product standards, ‘burdensome’ customs procedures, data localisation and so-called ‘lawfare’ of taxes and regulation.”

This is the extraterritorial imposition of US power writ large. Other countries may not decide their own policies on procurement, the quality or safety of goods, tariffs (!), protecting their citizens’ data from US acquisition, or how to tax and regulate US companies operating on their territory. It is outrageous.

The US has interfered in other countries’ external affairs for decades. It has always been ready to inflict economic suffering to achieve political subordination — as the economic war on Venezuela and the crippling six-decade illegal blockade of Cuba show. But now, despairing of its ability to compete with its “peer competitor” China without brute force, it threatens these policies on everyone at once.

Brute force? Yes. Trump has already backed up economic with military threats. His bid for control of the Panama Canal, effectively forcing a Hong Kong-based company there to sell infrastructure to a US-based one, was accompanied by such threats.

Whether Trump’s strategy can work is unclear. China is the biggest trading partner of a majority of countries: falling in with Trump carries heavy economic penalties as well. Many US manufacturing firms themselves depend on supply chains including China, and, as analyst Malcom Kyeyune observes, the US has shown none of the joined-up thinking China does in providing assistance to industries affected by foreign trade disruption.

What is clear is that it will be painful and carries the threat of war — quite possibly world war, if the US deploys its military to cut Chinese supply lines or seize its assets.

Britain, with its cross-party sycophancy toward the US, is among the most likely to submit to any and all of Trump’s demands, which on tax, public services, data protection and in other fields are likely to be unacceptable to socialists and unpopular with most people.

And appeasement on his economic agenda will make it harder to build mass opposition to a US-led drive to war.

Stand up to Trump. That should be our demand of politicians at every turn. 

Stand up to him over his abhorrent ethnic cleansing plan for Gaza. Stand up to him on his reckless attacks on China. Stand up to him on his grab for control of our own economy.

This is a battle against US imperialism. But also for our democratic right to decide British policy in Britain.