JEAN-CHRISTOPHE BOTT / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock
If the United States could synthesize cynicism and export it, it would solve its trade deficit problem and become the country with the largest surplus in the world.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent [1] came out publicly yesterday to accuse China of aggressing the world, of being a state economy, and of trying to slow down global trade. It’s absolutely breathtaking, the sheer audacity of completely inverting reality.
It was the United States that started a tariff war against the entire world, which is still ongoing, by the way. It is the United States that has been trying for years to asphyxiate China with technological barriers. It is the United States that floods the world with sanctions.
But the shamelessness knows no limits. Now Bessent is talking about gathering allies against China. These are the very same allies that the United States has been attacking with incredible virulence in recent months.
India is suffering 50% tariffs because Washington is trying to coerce it into abandoning Russian oil. Ironically, it was the United States itself that previously asked India to increase its purchases of Russian oil, precisely to prevent a collapse in international oil prices [2].
The President of South Korea declared that paying the tribute demanded by the Americans would lead his country to bankruptcy. As if that weren’t enough, the United States sent ICE [3] to a Hyundai factory in Georgia to chain, humiliate, and deport Korean workers who were building an electric battery factory at the request of the American government itself.
The United States attempted to extort Japan, imposing stratospheric tariffs and then demanding, in order for these to be withdrawn, that Japan invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the United States, resources that would be controlled by the White House itself. Japan has been refusing to confirm these investments. The American tariff attacks on Japan have already produced enormous political turbulence in the country, with several government falls.
Europe was forced to accept an agreement on incredibly humiliating terms, negotiated with disrespectful tactics. And the United States itself has already broken that agreement several times, recently reimposing new tariffs against strategic European products, such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and beverages.
Canada is routinely threatened with annexation by Trump [4].
And it is precisely to these victims that Bessent is now asking to condemn China for retaliating. Good luck assembling that coalition.
The attempt to present Chinese controls on rare earths as an “unprovoked attack on the world” borders on the ridiculous. The vast majority of the world is, in fact, applauding China. Even the average European wishes their leaders could respond in the same way, instead of submitting and being humiliated.
China is bringing accountability where there was impunity. It is understandable that it may be unusual for the United States to taste its own medicine coming from a truly strong power. But when you dig a hole for yourself, stop digging.
It is worth remembering that this is the same Bessent who, in May, promised that Trump’s “day of liberation” tariffs would create a “great siege” to isolate China. We already know how that strategy ended.
