Jenny Braddock, Bureau Chief, Department of Lost Causes
Published April 2, 2025
I just imagined a House subcommittee hearing titled “How to Beat China,” where the only concrete proposal involved slapping a 500% tariff on electric scooters and declaring TikTok a national security threat. No one could define “semiconductors,” but three different members shouted “bring back steel.” If that’s our new Cold War doctrine, Beijing can go ahead and start drafting the peace terms.
Meanwhile, Thomas L. Friedman—yes, that Thomas Friedman, the guy who once told us “The World Is Flat” and globalization would save us all—is now wandering the Huawei campus in Shenzhen like a man staring into the eyes of his own economic prophecy, only to realize the other guy blinked last. He didn’t quite say it felt like early Silicon Valley, but he came close—marveling at the innovation, the energy, the speed. The place had that unmistakable hum of progress, the kind we used to bottle and brand as American. And there it was, beating in the heart of China, while back home we’re livestreaming congressional hearings about Taylor Swift’s deep state ties and pretending tariffs are a strategy.
“…you’re also wrong if you think that China only cheated its way to global manufacturing dominance. It did cheat, copy and force technology transfers. But what makes China’s manufacturing juggernaut so powerful today is not that it just makes things cheaper; it makes them cheaper, faster, better, smarter and increasingly infused with A.I.”
—Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, April 2, 2025
This is what happens when protectionism becomes performance art. Tariffs used to be a tool. Now they’re a costume. The Trumpist right has turned economic nationalism into a ritualized self-own—driven more by vibes than results. The tariffs aren’t bringing back jobs. The trade war hasn’t rebuilt the Rust Belt. But it feels tough, it polls well in battleground states, and it fills the void where long-term policy thinking used to be.
Wired laid it out clearly: the U.S. isn’t just slipping—it’s being outmaneuvered. Efforts to kneecap Huawei or restrict China’s chip development haven’t slowed their rise; they’ve accelerated it. Here’s the Wired piece if you want the receipts. And while we’re screaming into microphones on the Hill about national security threats, the rest of the world is quietly building networks, chips, and coalitions that don’t include us.
We love to chant “decouple,” but we’ve got no idea how to survive the fallout. Europe’s ahead of us in clean energy. India’s filling the global supply chain vacuum we left behind. China’s not waiting around to be invited—they’re launching lunar bases while our Congress is still trying to ban Taylor Swift from Spotify. This isn’t economic nationalism. It’s economic nihilism.
We could be investing in workforce development, immigration reform, R&D incentives. Instead, we’re feeding red meat to the base and calling it strategy. It’s ideology over industry. Cosplay over commerce. And no, we can’t tariff our way to dominance—we already tried that. It made consumer prices jump and gave China the opening they needed to double down on self-reliance.
Friedman’s latest dispatch isn’t a liberal warning—it’s an obituary for American exceptionalism, written in the past tense. If we don’t course-correct fast, we won’t just lose this century. We’ll have handed it over without a fight.
Filed from a Capitol cloakroom with no ceiling tiles and three burner phones.
