RICARDO HAUSMANN
In August 1914, Europeans saw little value in the century of peace that had followed Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo. As historian Barbara W. Tuchman recounted in her 1962 book The Guns of August, public sentiment in Berlin, Paris, London, and Vienna was swept up by a wave of collective euphoria – a feverish excitement over the expected benefits of a swift and decisive world war. The result was four years of misery and devastation.
A similar sense of misguided bravado seems to pervade US President Donald Trump’s administration as it moves ahead with its reckless assault on the global security and trade order of the past 80 years. Convinced of an inevitable and easy victory, Trump has unilaterally declared war on the postwar order, failing to heed the lesson of Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, the military architect behind Prussia’s 1870-71 victory over France: No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.
At first glance, the United States appears well-positioned to win Trump’s trade war against China and key trading partners like Canada, Mexico, and the European Union. In his public remarks, Trump often fixates on America’s large trade deficit in goods, which reached a record $1.2 trillion in 2024. According to him, the trade deficit is irrefutable proof that the US is being treated “very, very unfairly, very badly.”
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