America’s Tariff Anxiety: Signs of a Hegemon in Retreat

04.17.2025

By Valikhan Tuleshov

The United States stands at a crossroads. Once the undisputed leader of a global economic order built on openness, innovation, and scale, it now appears increasingly unsure of how to maintain that dominance. Washington’s growing reliance on tariffs—often sweeping and erratic—signals more than just a trade dispute. It reveals a deeper strategic uncertainty about how to sustain hegemony in a world rapidly becoming more competitive, more regional, and more polycentric.

This shift is driven by three major concerns:

• A steadily deteriorating trade balance,

• Loss of technological leadership, especially in fields like artificial intelligence and green tech,

• Growing dependence on foreign production chains.

In this context, tariffs are not merely economic tools. They are symptoms of unease. Designed to shield U.S. industries from subsidized foreign competition—particularly from China—these measures aim to preserve American industrial and technological advantage. But they also risk undermining the very foundation of U.S. economic strength: global cooperation.

Protectionist policies raise the cost of imported goods, disrupt supply chains, and feed domestic inflation. They increase living costs and dampen consumer spending. Far from reinforcing American leadership, these measures could instead weaken it—pushing allies toward greater economic autonomy and encouraging adversaries to accelerate the development of their own supply networks and financial systems.

More fundamentally, the re-embrace of tariffs reflects not the confidence of a hegemon, but the caution of a power sensing the limits of its dominance. It is a reactive move—one that could inadvertently hasten the end of the very order it seeks to preserve.

In an increasingly complex and regionalized global economy, such a strategy risks dragging the United States into stagflation: the dangerous mix of slowing growth and high inflation. The fallout wouldn’t be limited to economic pain at home—it would erode the international legitimacy of American leadership and fracture the collaborative systems that once made U.S. innovation so formidable.

For decades, globalization wasn’t just about trade—it was about creating a shared platform for innovation. It allowed venture capital to scale startups overnight. It enabled new technologies to reach global markets in record time. It connected R&D, raw materials, manufacturing, and distribution in a seamless, cost-effective web.

This scale through cooperation was the engine of the innovation economy. Tariff walls threaten to break that engine apart.

The consequences are already visible:

• Rising costs of components and assembly,

• Slower product rollouts,

• Declining investor confidence in startups.

While tariffs might offer short-term protection for select industries, they risk becoming long-term roadblocks to competitiveness. More importantly, they signal a retreat from the very openness that made the U.S. a global innovation hub.

America still holds immense structural advantages—military strength, capital markets, and technological depth. But if it continues down the path of economic isolation, it won’t be securing its position—it will be stepping back from it.

In a world where leadership increasingly depends on agility, cooperation, and innovation, the U.S. cannot afford to wall itself off. Tariffs are not a plan. They are a warning.