By dismantling the post-WWII global order, the Trump administration forces allies to realign with China. As the U.S. retreats from global partnerships, China is positioned to dominate key industries like renewable energy, making the 21st century "the China century" by default as the world moves on without America.

The Western belief that free trade would cause authoritarian states like China to liberalize has proven false. Instead, this policy created a powerful manufacturing competitor whose interests diverge from the West's. The current era of deglobalization is an unwinding of this flawed foundational premise of the post-war order.

Trump's 'America First' platform was not a random occurrence but a predictable backlash against the US establishment's post-Cold War excesses. Policies like 'hyper-globalization' and 'forever wars' created domestic discontent and a loss of faith in traditional foreign policy, which Trump successfully exploited.

Lighthizer reframes the modern debate by asserting that the post-WWII era of globalism is the historical anomaly. He argues that from Lincoln to FDR, the 'American system' used tariffs to build the nation's manufacturing base and become the world's largest economy, making recent protectionism a return to a successful precedent.

The era of economic-led globalization is over. In the new world order, geopolitical interests are the primary driver of international relations. Economic instruments like tariffs and export restrictions are now used as levers to assert national interests, a fundamental shift from the US-centric view where the economy traditionally took the lead.

The post-WWII global system was always fated to end in this decade. The root causes are long-term trends in trade and demographics, specifically aging populations running out of working-age adults. Trump is merely the political figure officiating this pre-destined formal break, not its architect.

Both Trump and Biden administrations are abandoning 40 years of neoliberal free trade for "Hamiltonian" policies—high tariffs and industrial protectionism. This signals a structural, not political, change in the US economy, driven by national security concerns and considered permanent.

By shipping millions of jobs overseas, globalism forced American workers to compete with a much larger, cheaper international labor pool. This eliminated employers' need to compete for a finite domestic workforce, leading to wage stagnation. The proposed solution is to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S.

Globalism was highly successful, lifting millions from poverty. Its failure wasn't the concept itself, but the lack of strategic boundaries. By allowing critical supply chains (like microchips and steel) to move offshore for cost savings, nations sacrificed sovereignty and created vulnerabilities that are now causing a predictable backlash.