Offensive Mercantilism and the Crisis of Liberal International Order: Reinterpreting the U.S.-China Trade War

This article employs Jonathan Holslag’s concept of offensive mercantilism as a framework to reinterpret the recent shifts in the U.S.-China economic relations, specifically the Trade War initiated in 2018 by Donald Trump Administration’s decision to increase tariffs against imports from China, as a cataclysmic step for the trajectory of the Liberal International Order (LIO). The article asserts that trade war should be considered not as a mere departure from liberal norms, but as a strategic policy aimed at power projection through coercive economic diplomacy, given the broader structural erosion of U.S. hegemonic capabilities and the rise of alternative economic powers, albeit China. As such, in which ways the resurgence of protectionism and economic nationalism implicates on the U.S.-China economic relations, as well as the international order, guides the research. The findings of the paper suggest that trade protectionism, far from being an anomaly, is increasingly becoming a normalized strategy of economic competition within the multipolar international order. Accordingly, waging trade war as an offensive mercantilist option to contain China’s expanding economic, as well as military, clout, can be identified as a long-term strategy, rather than a short-term tactic, which would likely to be carried on, regardless of the ideological background of the U.S. governments, against perceived threats to the LIO and the U.S. hegemony within it.