Witten by Charlie Fink.
The United States today is less secure internationally than it was five months ago, and the blame lies largely at the feet of President Trump’s tariffs. Liberation Day did not just damage the American economy, it provided the opportunity our adversaries needed for a clean break, to reduce their reliance on American imports and build up an international order without the United States at the helm. As a result, North Carolinians are shouldering an additional tax burden in the name of economic prosperity and national security, while neither comes to pass.
To understand the damage Liberation Day has done to American national security, we must first understand the role of tariffs. Tariffs, although an economic policy, are not imposed for exclusively economic reasons. By increasing the price of foreign imports, tariffs can strategically shield domestic manufacturers from international competition, ensuring that industries critical to national defense stay afloat. Additionally, tariffs can be used to influence countries’ behavior, deliberately inducing economic pain as leverage during negotiations. Tariffs are, simply put, as much an aspect of a country’s national defense as they are of its economic policy when employed deliberately.
President Trump, for all his praise for the economic wonders of tariffs, recognizes this fact to at least some degree. He justified his Liberation Day declaration on national security grounds, declaring the US trade deficit a national emergency and employing the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to implement the tariffs. While he typically focuses on the economic benefits he expects from his protectionist policies, his tariffs actually have two primary goals. Consequently, even as they materially damage the American economy, Trump can still call his tariffs a success if they enhance America’s national security and strategic position, especially vis-à-vis our primary competitor and his favorite rhetorical punching bag — China.
Unfortunately, however, China is positioned to more vigorously compete with the United States today than it was before April, jeopardizing our national security. Since Liberation Day, China has greatly reduced its reliance on American food imports, which previously accounted for as much as 21% of their imported food in 2022. Using current North Carolina export data as an analogue, we can see that China has greatly reduced or halted entirely its imports of staple foods from the US. Total North Carolina exports to China of oil seeds and soybeans, products that China overwhelmingly relies on imports of to meet domestic demand, fell sharply. In the first six months of 2025, exports of these foods were approximately 85% lower than they were in the same period last year. Furthermore, meat exports declined by about 31%, while exports of certain vegetables and cereal grains completely halted.
This has an obvious and immediate negative impact on North Carolina farmers, as they lose market share to competitors and struggle to find alternative markets for their harvests. However, and perhaps more concerningly, this reduced reliance on American foodstuffs allows China greater freedom to act without regard to American concerns. Previously, the specter of food supply disruptions in the event of an international crisis forced Chinese leadership to carefully consider their actions to avoid instigating an American response. After Liberation Day, though, China has leveraged nationalist outrage at American tariffs to encourage boycotts of American goods, bearing the turbulence of shifting imports now during peacetime to ensure future food security for the future. Although the US still has means with which it can deter Chinese aggression, President Trump has unnecessarily forfeited leverage and allowed China to act more assertively.
Beyond simply losing leverage over China, though, Trump’s tariffs have hurt the legitimacy of US global leadership and accelerated China’s efforts, in concert with other US adversaries, to shape a new international order. China has spent years building up parallel institutions and economic blocs to those led by the United States and its allies, contesting the notion that the world order is truly rules-based and asserting that American leadership is, in reality, American hegemony. By suddenly and unilaterally imposing trade restrictions on the entire world, President Trump has lent credence to this rhetoric and China’s vision for the global order.
President Trump’s tariffs further legitimize China’s efforts to remake the international system through the trade substitution that has resulted from them. As they pivot away from US imports, China and its partners have turned toward their parallel institutions for alternative trading partners. As a result, these institutions have gained greater legitimacy and built stronger ties among their membership, the prime example of which is Brazil.
Brazil is a founding member of BRICS, an international organization whose stated purpose is to “democratize, legitimize, and balance the global order” (read: erode the American-led order). Brazil has become an increasingly favored trading partner of China. In the wake of Trump’s first trade war, and accelerating after Liberation Day, China has turned to them to meet their demand for food previously imported from the US, like soybeans, as well as other agricultural goods like cotton, with Chinese imports of North Carolina cotton declining by 96% this year. As a result, BRICS has gained substantial legitimacy as an economic partnership, and its members are less beholden to US-backed institutions like the WTO, advancing China’s efforts to revise the international order.
As a result of President Trump’s tariffs, North Carolinians pay more in taxes and face a shrinking market for their exports. Total North Carolina exports through July are 0.79% lower than they were in the same period last year, a concerning slowdown where there had previously been reliable, modest growth. This cost might be justifiable if the US were more secure today than it was before April, but tariffs have brought about the opposite outcome. The longer these tariffs remain in place, the further the US-led international system will erode, while China and our other adversaries revise the rules with increasing freedom to act against American interests. Trump’s protectionist experiment has failed, and it is imperative to lift our tariffs now before they can cause further damage to our economy and our national security.
