RececaDron
It was obvious that in my references to Trump desiring to weaken other nations that I was discussing trading relationships - as in the actual thread title - not their military standing.
There's little point in you responding to points that others haven't actually made, as it renders discussion impossible.
Trump's mano-a-mano business background appears to have strongly engendered in him a view of there being a fixed size commercial pie, where the more powerful side gets the (much) bigger slice, a concept he's then misapplied to the global economy as a whole.
Hence his desire to separate other nations from the protective groups they'd collectively formed, in order that he can bring his nation's strength to bear on them individually in order to secure trade terms preferential to the status quo.
He gains, they lose, in a one-to-one power battle. His entire MO.
Yes, but the two are not orthogonal.
If US policy was just about making the US financially stronger then one could see the logic of your argument.
But US policy is about having strong allies to combat what it sees as the enemies: Russia and China.
US policy is to create a strong unified force of the western capitalist nations to deter either enemy while at the same time maintaining its own economic strength by having a system of tariffs that are fair to both nations.
As things now stand US business have substantially larger tariffs to pay than do Chinese and European nations and others exporting to the US. US policy is to make the tariffs more balanced.
This is not just an academic exercise as tariffs pay for a lot of government spending and if tariffs are brought down as is the aim of current negotiations then other sources of income will have to be found. Hence there is a huge reluctance in Brussels, Beijing... to any change in tariffs. The US has a lot to gain from more equal tariffs, nations who have benefitted from tariffs to fund their government spending have a lot to lose as do industries within these nations that have benefitted from high tariffs keeping US products out and low US tariffs allowing them to sell more stuff in US markets.
If tariffs become more equal you can expect to see business that have benefitted from tariffs reporting reduced profits and those that have been hurt by high tariffs doing better.
In investment terms this implies that US equities will do well whereas European and Chinese ones will suffer. One has already seen e.g. falls in the Chinese market as the tariff talk has got louder and gains in the US market.
Which ever way you look at this, tariffs are a big component of global trade and setting them to be more equal is a big thing which will be resisted by those that benefit from the current ones and championed by those that lose and we could end up in some serious trade wars that will cause a lot of trouble as they did in the 1930's. Or leaders will accept that change is needed and adjust accordingly which likely means new taxes to restore government income lost to reduced tariffs, perhaps offset by increased trade and employment opportunities.
Regards,