Lokendra Sharma
On 2nd April, styled as ‘Liberation Day’, US President Donald Trump did what he had long hinted at during his campaign in 2024 — reset the global economic order to stop the ‘ripping’ off the US by other countries.
Trump announced a universal 10 per cent tariff on all imported goods beginning 5th April in what has been called the most sweeping tariff hike by the US since the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. Trump also announced ‘reciprocal’ tariffs on a number of countries, including allies such as Japan (24 per cent) and strategic partners such as India (26 per cent). The effective tariff on China is as high as 125 per cent, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
The markets have tanked not just in the US but also in Japan, India and elsewhere. Trillions of dollars have been wiped out in a few days. Naturally, therefore, Trump’s tariff war has dominated global headlines.
But the trade war has overshadowed another rewriting the Trump administration has been engaged in with significant implications for the global cyber landscape. For more than a decade, there was a continuity in the US on the cyber front despite there being three different presidents in power. But in just three months of Trump 2.0, the old ‘normal’ way of transacting in cyberspace is crumbling, altering how the US engages in cyber contestations.
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