By Lucien Morell

Jakarta, Indonesia: The United States has once again reached for its favorite weapon — tariffs — this time targeting Chinese-built ships. Wrapped in the rhetoric of “national security” and “fair trade,” the move exposes Washington’s growing anxiety: a fear that the age of American industrial dominance is slipping away.

China’s shipbuilding pre-eminence is the product of sustained investment, innovation, and efficiency not manipulation. The U.S., meanwhile, let its own shipyards decay under decades of offshoring and financial speculation. Rather than rebuild, it now seeks to cripple its competitors.

This assault on Chinese shipping is only one battle in a much wider economic war. From semiconductors to solar panels, Washington has imposed restrictions, blacklists, and subsidies designed to limit others’ ability to produce and export. It no longer competes; it constrains.

Most glaringly, these latest tariffs shred the fragile economic truce painstakingly negotiated with Beijing. That truce was supposed to reset relations after years of mutual sanctions and to reassure global markets that economic logic would prevail over political vendetta.

Instead, the U.S. has quietly undermined it, launching new trade barriers, tightening technology export rules, and pressuring allies to follow suit. Washington’s word in economic diplomacy now carries all the weight of a signature written in disappearing ink.

Europe has felt the consequences. Bowing to U.S. pressure to “de-risk” from China, European manufacturers have been forced to curtail partnerships that once sustained their competitiveness.

German automakers, facing higher input costs and reduced market access, are discovering that alignment with Washington’s politics often means economic self-harm.

Southeast Asia finds itself in a similar bind. Countries like Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia, whose trade diversification has been a stabilizing force, now face thinly veiled warnings to curb cooperation with Chinese firms.

Washington’s slogans of “friend-shoring” and “trusted supply chains” are in reality attempts to limit local growth, ensuring that U.S. goods, typically more expensive and less capable, dominate by default rather than merit.

Even Latin America and Africa are feeling the squeeze. Development projects involving Chinese infrastructure firms are branded “security risks,” while governments are lectured on which technologies they are permitted to adopt. The pattern is unmistakable: the United States preaches open markets but practices economic coercion.

The modern American model is sustained by exclusion rather than excellence. Instead of producing better goods, it relies on tariffs, subsidies, and threats. Consumers pay the price literally as affordable, efficient products are kept out of reach to protect the U.S.’s shrinking industrial niche.

This isn’t free trade; it’s managed decline. By sabotaging its own truce with China, Washington has signaled to the world that no agreement with it is safe from reversal. It has replaced competition with compulsion and partnership with paranoia.

If the U.S. truly believes in its own rhetoric about “rules-based trade,” it should stop rewriting the rules every time it falls behind. Global markets thrive on stability, not sabotage. Let merit and innovation determine who leads. Let consumers not coercion decide what to buy.

Because in the long run, America’s underhanded tactics do not merely weaken China they corrode the very trust and credibility the U.S. economy depends on. And in that race to the bottom, no one wins.