Trump's Tariff Offensive and the Rise of Strategic Regionalism: Toward Decentralized Globalization

Abstract This paper analyzes President Donald J. Trump's tariff policies during his first term (2017-2021) and second term (2025- ) as catalysts accelerating a deeper structural transformation in the global political economy. Trump's unilateral protectionism marked a sharp departure from neoliberal globalization, intensifying an already unfolding reconfiguration of global integration toward what this paper conceptualizes as decentralized globalization: a shift from a U.S.-centered, WTO-centric order to a more polycentric architecture anchored in strategic regionalism. By imposing tariffs on both rivals and allies, the U.S. exercised residual hegemonic power while simultaneously revealing the limits of its capacity to steer the global economy in an era of deep interdependence and multipolar competition. Adaptive responses from allies and adversaries illustrate this trajectory through increased reliance on regionally embedded strategies to reduce vulnerability to external disruptions while preserving cross-border connectivity. These adjustments are evident in the proliferation of regional trade agreements, the restructuring of global value chains, currency diversification, and the emergence of alternative governance arrangements. The paper argues that globalization is not reversing but reorganizing into a multinodal world economy, in which strategic regionalism functions as the principal mechanism consolidating decentralized globalization by balancing continued global integration with enhanced geopolitical control and geoeconomic resilience.