Behold the return of the Great Protectionist Pantomime, a spectacle so devoid of intellectual rigor that it makes a high school debate tournament look like the Council of Nicaea. The question currently being tossed around by the economic commentariat is as follows: Will the Chinese consumer, that long-suffering creature of state-mandated frugality and ancestral paranoia, act as a 'cushion' against the incoming barrage of Trumpian tariffs? It is the kind of question only an economist—a person whose entire profession consists of guessing which way a headless chicken will run—could ask with a straight face. The premise is that as the Orange Menace prepares to resurrect his trade war like a B-movie villain who refuses to stay dead, the sheer spending power of 1.4 billion people will somehow absorb the impact, sparing the global economy from a total coronary. It’s a lovely thought, provided you ignore every scrap of reality currently littering the floor of the 21st century.

Let’s look at the players. On one side, we have the return of the Trumpian doctrine, which views global trade not as a complex web of mutual dependencies, but as a zero-sum game played by someone who thinks a trade deficit is a personal insult. His solution to everything is the tariff—a blunt, prehistoric instrument that functions exactly like trying to perform brain surgery with a sledgehammer. The Right will cheer this as a stroke of nationalist genius, blissfully unaware that they are essentially voting for an across-the-board sales tax on their own plastic lifestyles. They imagine they are 'winning' while they pay four dollars more for a toaster made of recycled soda cans. It is a masterclass in moronic theater, performed for an audience that thinks 'supply chain' is a brand of off-road tires.

On the other side of the Pacific, we have the Red Emperor’s court, currently sweating through their polyester suits as they realize that the 'Chinese Dream' is looking more like a recurring night-terror. The CCP’s plan to have 'shoppers' cushion the blow is the ultimate irony. For decades, they have suppressed domestic consumption to fuel an export-led growth model that relied on Westerners buying garbage they didn't need. Now that the West is putting up the shutters, the Party is suddenly turning to its citizens and demanding they become hedonistic, spendthrift Western-style consumers overnight. It’s like asking a monk who has taken a vow of silence to suddenly host a high-stakes auction at a heavy metal concert. It’s not going to happen, primarily because the average Chinese citizen is currently watching their primary source of wealth—the real estate market—dissolve into a puddle of toxic debt and unfinished concrete skeletons.

The idea of a 'cushion' implies something soft, supportive, and comfortable. What we actually have is a bed of rusty nails. The Chinese shopper is not a mindless spending machine; they are an aging demographic terrified of a future without a social safety net. When your apartment's value is cratering and the state is tightening its grip on every aspect of your digital existence, your first instinct isn't to go out and buy a fleet of electric vehicles to spite a politician in Washington. Your instinct is to bury your yuan in the backyard and hope the local commissar doesn't notice. The 'nastier outcomes' mentioned by the more sober analysts aren't just 'imaginable'—they are the default setting for a world run by insecure narcissists.

The Left, in their usual display of performative hand-wringing, will decry the 'human cost' of this trade war while safely ensconced in their climate-controlled ivory towers, sipping lattes that were harvested by people who will be the first to starve when the trade routes buckle. They talk about 'global cooperation' as if the world were a faculty lounge instead of a shark tank. They hate the tariffs because they hate the man behind them, yet they have no answer for the fact that their beloved globalism has hallowed out the very working class they pretend to represent. They are the 'thoughts and prayers' of the economic world—useless, loud, and incredibly smug.

Ultimately, what we are witnessing is the collapse of a grand lie. The lie was that we could link the world together through commerce and somehow transform fundamental human tribalism into a peaceful shopping mall. Instead, we’ve just given everyone bigger sticks to hit each other with. Trump’s tariffs are the stick of a man who thinks he can bully his way back to 1955. Xi’s domestic consumption 'cushion' is the stick of a regime trying to maintain control over a population that is slowly realizing the miracle is over. Neither side cares about the 'shoppers' or the 'workers' they claim to champion. You are all just data points in a ledger that is currently being lit on fire by two men who are too old to care about the ashes they’re leaving behind. So, go ahead, buy that extra bag of imported grain or that discounted smartphone while you still can. The cushion is made of cardboard, and it’s raining.