Were Tariffs Just a Tactic For The Mar-a-Lago Accords?

To Investors,

The last 12 or so days have been wild. Trump’s Liberation Day tariff announcement shook everyone. Global stock markets were down, then went back up, tensions were high as some national leaders felt the need to announce retaliatory tariffs, and other leaders such as the Vietnamese President and President of the European Commission quickly jumped right to suggesting zero tariffs for the U.S. in order to express their desire for a trade deal.

On April 9th, President Trump announced a temporary pause to the tariffs for countries that did not retaliate to his initial tariff announcements. I think this was calculated and by no means a sign of Trump caving because in my view the Liberation Day event was a negotiating tactic, and where we go now is exactly what Trump has been saying he wanted to do for years, which is to reshape the global trading order.

What do I mean by that?

Well, I’m unable to confirm this, but I have a theory that the U.S. ended up with trade deficits initially by design as a way to expand U.S. influence globally. After Nixon announced the end of the Bretton Woods agreement and declared that gold would no longer be exchangeable for dollars, the United States was the only superpower in the world, and to maintain that status they used the U.S. dollar to help developing economies grow and industrialise, while attracting demand for U.S. dollars and cementing dollar dependency through exporting U.S. government bonds as a reserve asset.

I would argue that a strong dollar led to a higher standard of living in the U.S. but through a series of compounding events such as the Vietnam war, the Cold War, the Global Financial Crisis, then more recently with Covid, the U.S. trade deficits became more and more unsustainable because the U.S. ended up having to continuously fund trade settlements using debt, at the same time as carrying the burden of being a provider of reserve assets, which contributed to U.S. national debt reaching 123% of GDP as of 2024, and 10Y U.S. government bond yields reaching an uncomfortable level at around 4-5%, which means higher refinancing costs for the U.S. which would significantly add to the growing national debt.

Stacked on top of that problem, while the U.S. fiscal status was taking a bad turn, China was able to grow into its own superpower, supported by its low cost exports model, and ever growing trade surpluses.

As a legitimate superpower China is now seen as a threat to the United States, the U.S. dollar, and to the dollar as a reserve asset, and the U.S. 's hold on global security. This is what various commentators are saying and I agree with the security threat in terms of China expanding influence and the threat of China’s growth on domestic U.S. industrial capacity; but I disagree with the idea of China threatening the U.S. dollar.

After the announced 90 day pause on tariff implementation I think that we’re going to see most of the world’s leaders come to the table to make an agreement with the U.S. and the agreement will likely be world-changing, something like the initial Bretton Woods Agreement. These new negotiations will be called the Mar-a-Lago Accords; a gathering of global leaders to pen a new world order that will be America first (once again) similar to the Bretton Woods agreement.

The Mar-a-Lago Accords will be a reinforcing of United States self-sufficiency as well as U.S.and U.S. dollar hegemony. So a series of deals will be struck and I’ve broken down some suggestions of what I think will be the 3 key themes of the Accords, and what might shape the deal points within each theme…

1. Reorganising Supply Chains Away From Foreign Dependency:

There are three key supply chains that the U.S. will likely want to secure to ensure self-sufficiency.

The first is pharmaceuticals and medical equipment; because during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Grok, top U.S. medical equipme