Is desperation driving the US' latest foreign policy decisions?

New York City, America's financial capital.

Today, the United States is making more and more brazen threats to economies big and small, around the globe, with tariffs, duties, trade restrictions, and more tariffs. It is looking to increasingly leverage its economic muscle to bargain a "better deal" for its people under the radical policy shift of the current administration, which perceives the world as trying to "rip off" America for its own benefit.

The US looks to be advertently or inadvertently, burning many of its past bridges with strong allies like Japan, South Korea and the EU, while also burning bridges that are being built like the ones with India. Given the administration's proposal to implement a blanket 50% tariff on all goods originating from the European Union, with no deal to be seen for the foreseeable future, the EU is looking east to other trade partners such as India and China.

The current US geopolitical approach and climate indicate towards a desperate economic (ex-?) superpower trying desperately to pull itself back up in the global economic race by using its own existing economic arsenal to bully world powers into trading with it. But what the current administration is failing to understand is that the arrangement that catapulted them to such a status is fundamentally different than its current approach, and shifting it this drastically is like reversing a train with heavy cargo, extremely difficult and time-consuming.

The era of the preeminence of the US as the sole economic superpower is largely seen to be over with the rise of China since the late 20th and early 21st centuries, and it has now fundamentally shifted the way business and trade is done. The era of rampant globalization is largely seen to be behind us, and a new, slow but steady period of un-globalization (aka reinforcement of economic sovereignty/self-sufficiency) is seen to be taking place around the world, and such policy by the US will further expedite this process.

In conclusion, the US is making moves similar to a high school bully trying to mend his reputation by forcing others to like him. Such an approach to world politics and economics may lead to some shorter term gains in the form of appeasement by major corporations in the form of promises of domestic investment, but this approach certainly has the potential to derail America's foreign policy and strategy for the emerging global order for many, many more years to come, at a time where the US' relevance continues to diminish at a pace never seen before.