It’s turning into a familiar ritual. President Trump imposes fresh tariffs, often announced on social media late at night, and within seconds the decision is condemned by officials and politicians from Brussels to Paris, Beijing, Berlin, and London.
There are dramatic warnings about how trade wars benefit no one, accompanied by solemn declarations that Europe will not be bullied, and elegies for the “rules-based order.” The financial press dutifully chronicles the “chaos” and “unpredictability” of American trade policy, while CNN books another expert to explain why it cannot possibly work and the Financial Times runs yet another column about how the United States is only damaging itself.
Then, a few weeks later, buried somewhere on page 17, a different story starts to emerge: Germany has agreed to new defense procurement commitments; France is reconsidering agricultural protections; the European Union is suddenly open to renegotiating its digital services tax. Another trade relationship is quietly restructured, and on terms remarkably favorable to Washington. The opposition, it turns out, is mainly just for show. Behind the scenes a new consensus is starting to emerge. The Trump administration is quietly building a new global trading system—it’s just that nobody wants to talk about it.
European leaders routinely denounce Trump’s tariffs and “America First” rhetoric with an over-the-top passion that would get them thrown out of drama school. Yet their finance ministers are simultaneously reworking trade agreements in ways that previous American administrations spent decades failing to achieve. The disconnect between the public theater and private reality has become so vast that one might reasonably conclude the confected outrage itself serves a purpose—providing political cover for concessions that would otherwise be impossible to explain to domestic audiences.
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