Trend US national security strategy fuses tariffs, export controls, R&D and AI around advanced technology

Summary

Stephen Miran, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, argued that about 200,000 US manufacturing jobs a year were lost to unfair trade and that low postwar tariffs were never reciprocal. The essay counters that history shows tariffs protect economies poorly: five of six severe nineteenth-century US panics were caused or worsened by tariffs or embargoes, and Argentina, Brazil and India, whose average tariff reached 87 percent before 1991, paid a price. Even so, the author expects the United States to keep pushing Trump-style tariffs. Its national security strategy now runs through tariffs, export controls, R&D investment, the AI agenda and defence policy, with advanced science and technology at its base. For the current administration, advanced technology and industry mean a war machine rather than an engine of growth, and its 'manufacturing superpower' pledge aims at complete domestic supply chains for strategic assets.