The world is a dumpster fire, and the two primary arsonists are currently arguing over who owns the matches. Donald Trump, our favorite orange-tinted architect of global chaos, has decided that the best way to handle the inevitable rise of the Chinese manufacturing behemoth is not to innovate, or god forbid, improve the domestic workforce, but to engage in a global game of 'I’m Not Touching You.' It’s called “creative” trade policy, which is the diplomatic equivalent of a toddler drawing on the walls with his own excrement and calling it a mural. The goal, ostensibly, is to hobble China. The reality is more like tying your own shoelaces together to ensure the person running behind you trips over your corpse.

The core of this "creativity" involves sticking "poison pill" clauses into every trade agreement like a vengeful ex-spouse hiding raw shrimp in the curtain rods. The logic—if we can use such a generous word for the synaptic misfires occurring in Washington—is simple: If you want to trade with the United States, the world's largest market of people who buy things they don't need with money they don't have, you must pinky-swear never to sign a free trade agreement with a "non-market economy." In this context, "non-market economy" is a polite euphemism for "China," a country that has spent the last forty years quietly buying up the world while we were busy arguing about whether or not to rename high school mascots.

It is a masterstroke of petulance. By forcing smaller, desperate nations into this binary choice, the U.S. is essentially running a protection racket. "Nice economy you've got there," Uncle Sam says, his breath smelling of stale fries and unpayable debt. "It'd be a shame if something happened to your access to the Walmart supply chain." Meanwhile, the Chinese are across the street, offering high-interest loans for infrastructure projects that will inevitably crumble in a decade, provided you let them install a few thousand surveillance cameras in your capital city. It’s a choice between a bully who forgets your name and a predator who knows your social security number. It is the ultimate expression of the 21st-century condition: being forced to choose between two different flavors of exploitation.

The "poison pill" was first tested in the USMCA—the trade deal that replaced NAFTA because the latter didn't have enough of Trump's branding on it. It’s a clause that allows any member to leave the pact if another member enters a trade deal with China. It turns international commerce into a jealous teenage relationship. Canada and Mexico, caught between their massive neighbor and their desire for cheap Chinese steel, have to play along with the charade that they aren't already entirely dependent on both. It’s a farce of sovereignty performed for the benefit of voters who couldn't find Mexico on a map if it weren't for the "Build the Wall" stickers.

And what is the actual end goal? This assumes that China is a horse that can be tripped, rather than a systemic shift in global power that was facilitated by the very American corporations currently crying for protection. The American Right, in its infinite, mouth-breathing wisdom, thinks that by slapping tariffs on everything from washing machines to wedding rings, they are "bringing jobs back." They aren't. They are just making sure the American consumer pays more for the same garbage while the jobs migrate to Vietnam or India, where the labor is just as cheap and the environmental regulations are just as nonexistent. The intellectual laziness of the conservative movement has finally peaked; they have decided that if they can't win the game, they'll just set the board on fire and claim it's a strategic heating solution.

The Left, meanwhile, watches this with a mixture of performative horror and quiet relief. They hate Trump’s "tonality," yet they find themselves strangely enamored with the idea of protectionism when it's rebranded as "environmental standards" or "labor protections." They want to stop China not because of the geopolitical threat, but because China doesn't use the correct pronouns in its state-run propaganda. It’s a battle of the morons. One side wants to build a fortress of stupidity; the other wants a fortress of virtue-signaling. Neither side seems to notice that the walls are already on fire and the roof has been sold to a private equity firm.

The reality of global trade is that it is a parasitic organism. We have built a world where the survival of a farmer in Iowa depends on the spending habits of a middle-class family in Shanghai, whose income depends on the American demand for plastic spatulas. To try and decouple these two entities through "creative" legal traps is like trying to perform surgery on Siamese twins with a chainsaw. You might technically separate them, but neither is going to survive the process. This isn't diplomacy; it's a suicide pact signed in crayon.

In the end, this isn't about economics. It’s about the ego of a declining empire. The U.S. is the aging prom queen who can't stand that a younger, hungrier girl has moved into town, so she starts rumors and tries to get everyone to boycott the new girl’s party. It’s pathetic. It’s petty. And it’s exactly what we deserve. We have abandoned the pursuit of excellence for the pursuit of "leverage," and in doing so, we have ensured that the future belongs to whoever can survive on the least amount of dignity. So, let the trade wars continue. Let the tariffs rise and the "poison pills" be swallowed. By the time the dust settles, we’ll all be too broke to buy anything anyway, which might be the only real way to save the planet.