The Trump administration has unleashed the dogs of war—a trade war, that is. After first raising tariffs on every nation on the planet by 10 percent, President Donald Trump, using authorities granted to him by Congress to raise tariffs in national emergencies, went further and on April 2 put even higher tariffs ranging from 11 to 50 percent on fifty-seven countries. A week later he paused those additional tariffs for ninety days, but kept in place those imposed on China, which retaliated with tariffs of 34 percent on imports from the United States. A tit-for-tat tariff war commenced; on April 9, Trump had raised tariffs on Chinese imports to 145 percent, and China had raised its duties on U.S. imports to 125 percent and stopped the export of rare earth metals. A full-blown trade war between two of the world’s economic superpowers had erupted.
No doubt the economic tensions between the United States and China have been amped up to eleven. But will a trade war erupt in a shooting war? There have been instances in the past when trade disputes ended up in hostilities, with the Anglo-Dutch Wars of the 17th and 18th centuries and the Opium Wars of the 19th century serving as prominent examples. But perhaps the most infamous case was the series of economic embargoes placed on Japan by the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration leading up to the outbreak of World War II in the Pacific.
After the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, Japan sought to isolate China from the outside world. This goal was furthered by the fall of the Netherlands and France to Nazi Germany, events that provided an opportunity for Japan to add to its empire in Asia. In July 1940 Japanese forces occupied parts of northern Indochina, at that time a French colony. In retaliation, President Roosevelt embargoed the sale of scrap iron, steel, and aviation fuel to Japan. A year later Japanese forces moved into southern Indochina, leading Roosevelt to freeze all Japanese assets in the United States and cutting off Japanese access to U.S. oil. Japan could not long survive as an industrialized nation without imported oil, most of which at the time came from the United States. Japan could either give in to U.S. demands or go to war to seize by force the resources its economy needed to survive. Japanese leaders chose war.
It is unlikely that President Xi will retaliate against Trump’s tariffs with force. Although the tariffs will be painful, China has been working to insulate its economy from U.S. economic pressure since 2017. Unlike Japan in 1941, China has other options for both needed imports and other markets for its exports. But like the Anglo-Dutch wars in the early modern period, the trade war between the United States and China will be economically painful and is likely to last for years to come.
