Tariffs are just theater

There’s a lot of noise around tariffs lately.

America likes to dress it up as America versus the world, but we all know it’s really about China.

Manufacturing versus nationalism. Inflation, trade deficits, sanctions, counter-sanctions. Theatrics, effective immediately.

And everyone’s got their angle.

Economists are busy calculating potential fallout, trying to trace the impact through spreadsheets and sliding charts. Politicians spin it into strategy, slapping a flag over their insecurities. Everyone’s out to be a hero.

It’s a circus, alright.

But I’m not trying to be one of those people. I won’t even pretend that I know what IHSG really stands for.

What I do know is when something is being performed. And this is theater, it is politics dressed as war.

One side feels disrespected while the other, threatened. Neither wants to lose face so they puff their chests, throw their weight around, and act like they’re in control. The guy who used to run the school is now anxious about the new transfer student. It’s not even geopolitical, it’s the same tired story from the 2000s teen movies. It’s a chick flick your girlfriend watches, except it’s real and it affects supply chains.

Tariffs go up, threats get issued and then quietly walked back when it starts to hurt a certain part of the economy. I’s all optics, and pure ego.

And if I’m being honest, that’s how a lot of men behave when they’re backed into a corner. We don’t think, we just posture. We swing too hard, too fast and then we bluff. We self-destruct just to make a point.

But this game was never about logic. It’s about perception, and with the countless hours I spent on history lessons in high school, I know that perception is the most expensive illusion in history.

America used to be the master illusionist. Remember Iraq? We bought it. The world bought it. Saddam was positioned as Thanos, the final boss of terror. It was a narrative so clean, you could fit it into a Marvel script now. America wasn't just fighting wars, it was selling stories.

Now, America is trying to tell another story. Let me put it simply.

America is the strongest man in the gym. Everyone else keeping their head down, hoping to get through their workout without being noticed. But something shifted. The dominance started to crack when the big guy couldn’t let anyone else make progress. He kept interrupting and policing everyone around him, including his allies. He wasn’t just lifting, he was sabotaging everyone else’s gains.

Then came China.

Quiet. Focused. Traditional. The guy in the back of the gym no one paid attention to. Too skinny, too disciplined, not enough swagger to be a threat. America didn’t take him seriously, in fact, America didn’t even care. But discipline stacks. And while America was busy guarding the mirror and checking himself out, China was building muscle behind the scenes.

Now the gym feels different. It’s getting louder. There’s a new big guy, and plus he’s gotten rich. Suddenly, that quiet guy is pressing plates nobody thought he could lift.

What America’s dealing with now is not sabotage, it is simply neglect. The decay didn’t come from China, it came from within. From years of protecting the interests of the few while ignoring the foundation that made America great in the first place: the middle class, the public schools, the innovators who weren’t already rich.

America stayed big, but only to satisfy its big boys. China, on the other hand, made a different bet. It knew its biggest strength wasn’t image or big business, it was people.

China focused on building multiple fronts to achieve its goal. They focused on infrastructure, education, culture, on workforce development, everything. It didn’t try to mimic Western democracy because it never needed to. Deng Xiaoping saw that prosperity didn’t require Western-style liberalism because Singapore was proof. China took the model, tailored it, scaled it, and perfected it.

And this sentiment is shared and echoed by plenty of great American business men. Elon Musk keeps praising the discipline of Chinese workers. Tim Cook continues to rely on Chinese manufacturing, not just for efficiency but because they deliver. Ray Dalio keeps highlighting China’s long-term thinking. Charlie Munger admired their decisiveness. Jeffrey Sachs pointed out how they prioritize public goods without turning it into a political brawl.

These aren’t fanboys, these are builders acknowledging something very simple: strategy that works.

While America was politicking, China was planning. While America debated identity, China built capability. No big words or games, it just needed to make itself indispensable.

So when America launched this whole tariff war, they already won the leverage game. The US moved out of emotion, while China responded with calculation. That’s what power looks like when it’s not desperate. And you can always smell desperation.

And let’s not forget, this is the civilization that birthed Sun Tzu. They don’t fight to fight. They let you punch yourself out.

All China did in this tariff war is to simply reveal the hypocrisy behind American ideals, and nobody likes a hypocrite.

“All warfare is based on deception.”

Sun Tzu said that. And China took notes.

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So they don’t need to contradict Western narratives, they just need to quietly outperform them, and it didn’t happen overnight.

And that’s where the real war is being fought.

Not on tariffs, not on ideals, but on truth. Because when illusions start to crack, when the country that once symbolized fairness, democracy, and progress starts revealing its contradictions, the fall isn’t external, it is internal.

No tariff can fix that.

While America performs, China informs. That’s the game.