Second of a series

SEVERAL weeks ago, I began a series analyzing the tectonic shifts in global trade triggered by President Donald Trump’s aggressive tariff initiatives. The sweeping duties on 120 nations launched in April 2025, were framed as a “patriotic economic defense” — a blunt instrument designed to force the world to play by Washington’s rules. However, as the dust settles, the ledger tells a different story. These tariffs did not extract the promised concessions from rivals; instead, they functioned as a massive tax on American consumers and a catalyst for the erosion of America’s soft power.

The policy has ironically undermined the very goal of restoring American strength. While Trump trumpeted “trade war victories” — China promises to purchase soybeans and rare earths — the reality on the ground was starkly different.

Beijing delivered empty promises while quietly shifting its supply chains to Brazil and Central Asia. Today, US exports sit uncompetitive in silos and warehouses, while Chinese reserves remain at record highs. America finds itself economically strained and geopolitically diminished, while China has used the chaos to consolidate a massive strategic advantage.

Today, across global capitals, a quiet shift is under way. Alliances, markets and ambitions are being rewired not through revolutions but through recalibration. The international order, once anchored by Washington’s predictability, is loosening. Trump’s “America First” policy, delivered through tariffs and confrontational rhetoric, promised renewed dominance. Instead, it accelerated the arrival of a multipolar world where nations no longer defer to a single superpower but shop for the best deal.

The unraveling begins

The unraveling did not begin with a bang. It began with hesitation among its oldest friends. Allies watched Washington impose tariffs on friends and foes alike, threaten to withdraw from alliances, and treat diplomacy as a sentimental relic. What began as “tough negotiation” soon exposed itself as erratic governance wrapped in nationalist slogans.

America, once the conductor of the global orchestra, began playing solos that no longer matched the rhythm of the rest of the world. Washington turned inward, the rest chose not to wait. And this is the quiet tragedy: China didn’t engineer America’s decline; it was self-inflicted.

In Southeast Asia, the Philippines has felt this shift more acutely than perhaps any other nation. Long accustomed to relying on the steady, if sometimes heavy-handed, presence of America, Manila found itself navigating a landscape where American attention wavered, and security commitments seemed increasingly conditional. That uncertainty created strategic openings that Beijing was more than happy to exploit with a mixture of “checkbook diplomacy” and maritime pressure.

The vacuum that Washington created

For over seven decades, US leadership rested not just on military strength but on trust. From Berlin to Seoul, allies aligned with Washington because they valued its consistency, strategic grounding and the security umbrella that enabled global trade. Trump upended that compact, treating power as a zero‑sum contest of volume — believing that speaking louder and threatening more would force others to fall in line.

The world largely tuned him out. As the “Tariff War” expanded from steel to soybeans and semiconductors, countries moved to insulate themselves from America’s domestic volatility.

The structural consequences of that retreat are now visible across key regions. Europe, rattled by repeated threats to NATO, accelerated its push for “strategic autonomy,” striking trade deals with Beijing and securing Gulf energy without US mediation. Asia, wary of being dragged into a trade crossfire, quietly forged economic side arrangements with China through the Asean bloc. In the Middle East, Gulf monarchies — once pillars of US influence — deepened ties with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), treating Washington’s warnings as passing weather rather than binding directives.

The Philippines, caught between its treaty obligations and its geographic vulnerability, watched this unpredictability with growing unease. When the US began taking Manila’s alignment for granted, it weakened the very trust that had anchored the alliance for generations.

Sensing this hesitation, China intensified its pressure in the West Philippine Sea, testing the limits of how far Washington would actually go to defend a partner it had recently snubbed in trade negotiations.

China’s procurement strategy

While Washington treated the global stage as a theater for confrontation, Beijing treated it as a procurement exercise. China’s “quiet ascendancy” is not built on emotional volatility or late-night Truth-Social posts. It is built on manufacturing discipline, logistical dominance, and the gradual accumulation of dependencies.

The Belt and Road Initiative, mocked in Washington, quietly became the spine of a new economic geography. Latin America now treats Beijing as a co-equal partner. Africa’s railways and hospitals have Chinese steel in their bones. Southeast Asia performs diplomatic tai chi, balancing a rising China with a retreating America. Even Mexico, America’s economic twin, expands trade with China despite Washington’s attempts to isolate Beijing.

Trump swung at Beijing with tariffs, imagining China would buckle. Instead, China reached for its abacus. That difference — between a power that performs and one that plans — defines the new century.

The psychological shift: A ‘post-American’ world

The most significant change is psychological. For decades, America was the “steady variable” in global affairs. America First revealed a country whose commitments rose and fell with one man’s temperament.

Nations have stopped aligning instinctively. They now practice what financial managers call “strategic ambiguity.” They hedge, they triangulate, and they treat their relationship with Washington as one piece of a diversified portfolio.

The world is not “anti-American”; it is simply post-American. It is a world that has accepted the reality that the US may no longer be the reliable guarantor of global order.

In the Global South, this awakening is palpable. From Brazil to Pakistan, nations are seeking stability over ideology. They want trade without lectures and infrastructure without the threat of sanctions. As Washington turned inward to debate its own identity, Beijing stepped outward, offering “predictability” as its most valuable export.

The ledger of history

History does not judge with a gavel; it records with a ledger. And as we head toward the conclusion of this series, the ledger is remarkably clear. While Trump relied on slogans, Beijing built systems. While Washington imposed tariffs that raised the price of a washing machine in Ohio, China was signing contracts for the ports that would ship those machines to the rest of the world.

The empire that once wrote the rules of the global game is now spent arguing with the referees. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is playing a new game entirely — one designed, financed and moderated by Beijing. “America First” was meant to elevate the nation to new heights. Instead, it revealed a world that was ready and willing to move on without it. For the first time in living memory, the America is not the protagonist of the global narrative, but its loudest bystander.

The tragedy for Manila is that this vacuum isn’t just a matter of trade — it’s a matter of territory. As the US vacillates, the Philippines is left to navigate a dangerous middle ground, a frontline state in a century being rewritten by those who measure power in contracts, not applause.

To be continued next week