Chronicle of a Descent into Hell !!!
April 2, 2025, is marked in Washington DC, by an unprecedented celebration of « Theater Politics » [Photo 1]. It is the celebration of the new offensive of President Trump’s regime, which claims that the rest of the world has taken advantage of the generosity of the United States, facts materialized, in their view, by the multiple deficits in international trade.

All countries of the world, including an island inhabited by penguins and the US military base of Diego Garcia, are therefore called upon to rectify this supposed anomaly, with a 10% tariff rate for access to the US market. Additional rates, however, vary depending on the trade deficit with third countries and are calculated as follows: The US trade deficit with a country is divided by imports from that country, then multiplied by 100, yielding a ratio, which in turn is multiplied by 100 to yield a percentage [Example of the European Union, (fig. 2)].

Photo 2: The methodology used to set worldwide tariffs rates
These rates are presented in a summary table that President Trump displayed triumphantly during his Hollywoodian Liberation Day show on April 2, 2025 (fig. 3).
China, however, occupies a very special place in Trump I and II regimes geostrategic doctrine. It is the existential competitor that must be either sabotaged or restrained at any cost….. Which has triggered an upward spiral, a most extraordinary escalation, with rates reaching 145% on Chinese exports to the United States, in fact a trade embargo….
The call for negotiation launched by President Trump is nothing other than a kind of ukaze for submission, as President Trump said himself in obscene terms unworthy of diplomatic exchanges between sovereign countries. President Trump has the deep conviction that China needs the United States much more than the United States needs China… which is in fact far from being the case. Since the Trump I administration’s trade assaults and the Covid-19 pandemic, the share of Chinese exports to the United States has continued to decline, currently standing at around 14%… (fig. 4). This is not insignificant, but it considerably diminishes the impact of the US de facto trade embargo, as China has begun a profound diversification of its partnerships, with a focus on the « Global Majority » countries in Asia, Africa, Central and South America, and the South Pacific.

The high degree of militarization of US strategic doctrine, in all its diplomatic, multilateral, and economic versions, leads to the perception of the deficit in the US-rest of the world trade balance as an act of aggression, ignoring, or more precisely, pretending to ignore the true causes of imbalances in international trade. These imbalances have multiple causes: financial flows, the specialization and division of production tasks, the differential in production costs, consumer demand, the supply chain, etc.
The situation created by the Trump regime’s tariff offensive is a perfect illustration of the prisoner’s dilemma of game theory. The prisoner’s dilemma, formulated in 1950 by Albert W. Tucker at Princeton, illustrates a situation in which two players would benefit from cooperating, but in the absence of communication between them, each of the perfectly rational partners chooses to betray the other if the game is played only once in order to maximize its gains. Sincere cooperation between China and the United States would be an important factor of stability in world trade. While China, through multiple initiatives, including the « Belt and Road Initiative » (BRI) launched in 2013, is contributing to building civil infrastructure that facilitates and amplifies connectivity between nations [fig. 5], the USA focuses on display of military might and hardware

The United States has no major infrastructure projects worthy of the name outside of the United States territory, but has amplified its military presence throughout the world with nearly 800 military bases [fig. 6]. Numbers of countries including, to name but a few recent ones, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yugoslavia, Syria were destroyed by the United States military adventurism.

The United States seems rather paralyzed by China’s growing economic, scientific, and diplomatic power. Chinese engineering has achieved spectacular prowess. The Chinese fast-speed railway network is the most spectacular in the world. The Chinese space program, with its space station, is now unique in the world. Chinese universities, with one exception, occupy the top 10 places in scientific publications according to a recent assessment by the journal Nature…
All attempts to strangle Chinese high technology sectors have failed, accentuating the technological autonomy of the People’s Republic of China… Cooperation is preferable to confrontation. The global majority with its 7 billion inhabitants respects and supports China … The United States, having chosen the military option, no longer has the means to impose itself on the rest of the world. Bullying, Intimidation, and black-mailing do not work anymore. The Trump regime’s hope is to fracture the strategic alliance between China and the Russian Federation. This is perhaps why the Trump regime is sparing Russia in its customs offensive. However, even that option must be qualified since Russia has accumulated more than 27,000 sanctions from the United States and its allies, and may consequently be warry of trusting any western power.
Would Trump’s outrageous reaction be the swan song of a power that has alienated the rest of the world, or a painful cure for the rebirth of the United States? That’s the question!!!!!!!!!! The arrogance and selective deafness of the conservative elite of the United States—Republicans and Democrats alike—tips the scales in favor of the swan song…
Augustin F. C. Holl
Haikou, Hainan Province, South China
April 18, 2025