Do you feel liberated? I don’t. I hate that this is what we’re calling liberation: an unraveling of global cooperation, a chaotic economic policy masquerading as patriotism, and a delusional fantasy of reindustrialization through tariffs. On April 2nd, 2025, Donald Trump declared “Liberation Day” in a Rose Garden speech meant to project strength and restore economic sovereignty. The centerpiece? A sweeping, chaotic package of tariffs-10% on all imports, and up to 34% on goods from adversaries like China and Japan. The announcement triggered global markets, drew harsh international responses, and, more importantly, marked a sharp historical reversal: not just of trade policy, but of the very logic that underpinned the American-led global economic order.

To understand the significance, you have to go back nearly a century. In 1930, the Smoot Hawley Tariff Act ushered in an era of protectionism, imposing massive duties on over 20,000 imported goods. It was, in many ways, an economic disaster. Global trade collapsed, U.S. exports fell by over 60%, and retaliation cascaded across Europe and beyond. Just four years later, FDR’s Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act (RTAA) began to undo the damage, shifting U.S. policy toward negotiated, mutual tariff reductions. It was the beginning of the postwar liberal trade order-one based on multilateralism, diplomacy, and the belief that interdependence, not isolation, preserves peace.

Trump’s tariffs are the philosophical inverse of RTAA. Where RTAA believed in reciprocity, Liberation Day relies on grievance. Where FDR saw trade as a stabilizer of global alliances, Trump weaponizes it. Perhaps most alarmingly, the calculation method used to assign tariffs country by country-based on bilateral trade deficits, not actual tariffs or market barriers-appears to resemble something out of a language model prompt, not serious economic analysis.

But this isn’t just about policy incompetence. It’s about a deeper unraveling.

Additionally it reflects a deeper problem in the Trump administration’s relationship with technology: a naive belief that consumer-grade tools and algorithmic shortcuts can substitute for institutional expertise and structured decision-making. Just weeks earlier, The Atlantic reported that Trump officials had used a Signal group chat to coordinate military strikes-accidentally adding a journalist who witnessed the entire operation. This wasn’t a one-off. From misconfigured federal websites to slashing critical aid programs without review, the administration has repeatedly favored convenience and vibes over competence and responsibility.

The U.S. is actively abandoning the logic of the world it once built: the Pax Americana of soft imperialism, alliance-based power, and shared economic architecture. In its place: erratic executive decrees, hostility toward allies, and an economic worldview rooted in nostalgia and distrust. Trump’s obsession with trade deficits, his disdain for multilateralism, and the instinctive use of economic power as punishment reveal a broader truth: this isn’t policy. It’s performance.

And yet the consequences are real. Markets are reeling. U.S. manufacturing-now deeply intertwined with Canada, Mexico, and East Asia-faces massive uncertainty. The very companies this was supposed to help are shedding value. Allies are retaliating. Strategic partners like Vietnam and Bangladesh-key alternatives to Chinese supply chains-are now being penalized alongside Beijing. It’s economic nationalism unmoored from strategy.

This is the anti-reciprocal age. The world’s largest economy is turning inward, not with a plan, but with a tantrum. And in doing so, it’s not just undoing the legacy of FDR-it’s burning the last threads of credibility that held the liberal economic order together.

The tragedy isn’t just the economic damage. It’s the missed opportunity. The world does need to rethink globalization. But Trump’s answer isn’t a system-level correction. It’s an instinctual, chaotic backlash-one that could leave us more fractured, more vulnerable, and far less prepared for the crises to come.