How Project 2025, Stephen Miran, and Trump Are Rewriting the Rules of Global Trade
President Trump has reignited a global economic firestorm, declaring that the U.S. has been “ripped off” for decades by unfair trade deals—pointing to massive trade deficits and claiming other nations impose crushing tariffs on American goods. In a sweeping move, he unveiled a bold new tariff regime, including a universal 10% import tax and a punishing 34% on Chinese imports, vowing to “level the playing field.” Yet beneath the rhetoric, fact-checkers reveal a more complex picture: the EU’s real average tariffs are a modest 4.8%, not the 39% claimed, and the U.S. actually runs a healthy trade surplus in high-value services like finance, education, and entertainment. As Trump redraws the rules of global trade with bravado and blunt force, critics warn of economic blow back and a dangerous oversimplification of the intricate machinery behind global commerce.
Political Motivations
Why slap on tariffs instead of fixing what’s broken? Because tariffs are fast, blunt, and politically intoxicating — the economic equivalent of a sugar high. They let politicians thump their chests and shout, “I’m protecting American jobs!” while the real, deep-rooted problems — a fractured education system, crumbling infrastructure, hollowed-out manufacturing, and decades of misaligned incentives — remain unresolved. Fixing those demands vision, cooperation, and time, none of which win votes in a 24-hour news cycle. Tariffs, on the other hand, are immediate, visible, and aggressive — a perfect fit for a political culture addicted to spectacle. But make no mistake: they are a smokescreen. Until America confronts its structural rot, it’s not China or Mexico that needs to be feared — rather US own refusal to rebuild from within.
In early 2025, the United States returned to the tariff table. Not with a whisper—but a bang.
This time, it wasn’t impulsive or symbolic. It was strategic.
Within weeks of his second inauguration, President Donald Trump signed off on a sweeping tariff initiative targeting goods from China, Europe, Mexico, and even longtime allies like South Korea and Canada. Billions in new levies rolled out across industries: cars, electronics, raw materials, semiconductors.
But what makes this tariff regime different from 2018–2019 or the trade wars of the past?
Two words: Project 2025.
A Blueprint, Not a Backlash
Project 2025 is the Heritage Foundation’s mega-policy manual—920 pages of conservative vision for rebuilding America’s institutions, economy, and global posture.
Buried deep in its economic section is a sharp pivot from Reagan-era free markets. Instead, it pushes for managed trade, strategic reshoring, and assertive use of tariffs to realign America’s economic structure.
At the center of this vision is Stephen Miran, now Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. In late 2024, Miran published A User’s Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System, a provocative paper that made the case for re-engineering America’s global trade strategy through:
• Strategic tariffs
• Currency policy shifts
• Realignment of trade and defense policy
• Reduced exposure to foreign supply chains
His argument? The U.S. dollar’s role as global reserve currency has come at the cost of industrial hollowing—and tariffs can be a corrective force when wielded wisely.
Tariffs in Motion: Trillions Pledged, Skepticism Brewing
The results came fast:
Over $2.8 trillion in new investment announcements since January 2025.
• Apple: $500 billion for U.S.-based operations
• Hyundai: $21 billion to expand U.S. EV manufacturing
• TSMC: Recommitted to U.S. chip production in Arizona
• OpenAI & SoftBank: $500B in U.S. AI infrastructure investment
The administration called it the dawn of a new industrial age.
But quietly, many business leaders are hedging. A Bloomberg investigation noted that while the pledges are historic, much of the capital remains uncommitted or conditional.
Behind closed doors, the questions swirl:
• Can U.S. factories operate cost-effectively at scale?
• Will consumer prices rise?
• Can the workforce meet demand?
Why the skepticism?
During Trump’s first term, the administration sought to encourage U.S. corporations to repatriate overseas profits and relocate operations domestically through the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) and aggressive trade policies. The TCJA lowered the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% and imposed a one-time tax on foreign-held profits, resulting in roughly $777 billion in repatriated earnings in 2018. However, much of this capital was directed toward shareholder buybacks rather than domestic investment or job creation. Simultaneously, tariffs on imports, particularly steel and aluminum, aimed to spur U.S. manufacturing and led some foreign firms, like Hyundai, to invest in American facilities. Despite these efforts, the broader goals of significantly reshoring operations and boosting U.S. manufacturing had mixed results, with limited impact on economic growth and wage increases, and many firms continuing to offshore jobs.
The Labor Bottleneck
Reshoring is only as strong as the workers behind it.
But there’s a problem: the U.S. hasn’t just offshored its factories—it’s let its industrial skill base atrophy.
• Automation is responsible for 85% of manufacturing job losses since the 1980s.
• AI is poised to transform high-skill jobs as well.
• Skilled trades and technical labor are in short supply nationwide.
While apprenticeship programs have expanded (up 27% in five years), they can’t match the scale of what’s needed unless there’s a dramatic acceleration in workforce development.
Without a major pivot to vocational education, skilled immigration, or automated productivity, reshoring risks becoming a symbolic reshuffle—not a sustained revolution.
Across the Pacific: Huawei’s Counterpunch
While the U.S. doubles down on protectionism, China is doubling down on innovation.
In 2024, Huawei posted a 22.4% revenue increase—rebounding from U.S. sanctions by investing over 20% of revenue into R&D and launching an expansive new innovation campus in Shanghai.
It’s a stark contrast:
• The U.S. is using tariffs to protect and rebuild.
• China is investing relentlessly to leap ahead.
The danger? You can’t tariff your way to innovation. America’s historical advantage—its technological lead—is now being challenged by national champions with deep state support.
John F. Kennedy, 1961 ….”We cannot afford to be second best in anything.” --- a marked departure in global leadership vs. Trump and Co.
Tariffs in Historical Perspective
This isn’t America’s first dance with protectionism. It rarely ends cleanly.
• Smoot-Hawley (1930): Deepened the Great Depression after triggering a global trade war.
• McKinley Tariff (1890): Sparked short-term growth but led to inflation and electoral backlash.
• Trump Tariffs (2018–19): Mixed results; little job creation, retaliatory tariffs hurt farmers.
Project 2025 and Miran argue this time is different. The key, they say, is a coordinated strategy—tariffs paired with incentives, currency management, and industrial policy.
Whether that coordination delivers long-term gain… or short-term disruption… remains to be seen.
What Business Leaders Are Really Thinking
Publicly, many CEOs are on board.
Privately? It’s more nuanced.
Executives are running cost-benefit analyses. They’re modeling scenarios. They’re asking:
• Will the tariffs last beyond 2028?
• Will reshoring stick once subsidies phase out?
• Can AI and robotics replace the labor we no longer have?
For now, many firms are announcing investments—but reserving the right to pause or scale back, depending on election cycles and global demand.
The Big Picture: A New Trade Doctrine
This is not just another phase in U.S. trade politics. It’s an ideological shift.
• Free trade is out.
• Strategic decoupling is in.
• Reshoring + tariffs + industrial policy is the new triad.
Whether it succeeds will depend not just on presidential will, but on execution, labor market response, and whether the U.S. can compete on innovation—not just restrict through tariffs.
Bottom Line: Will the U.S. Rebuild or Retreat?
Project 2025, Miran’s economic nationalism, and Trump’s trade instincts have merged into a doctrine we’ve never seen before: ideologically coherent, tactically aggressive, and willing to rewrite the post-WWII economic order.
Perhaps it could mark a revival of American industry—if paired with the right investments, education, and strategic clarity. But where is the strategic discipline in an erratic presidency and plan to make this a US reality?
It could be remembered as a well intentioned rerun of failed protectionism, if the deeper structural needs go unaddressed. And who, in government and policy, is talking about these needs today?
Either way, tariffs are no longer just a policy tool.
They’re a philosophy.
And they’re now the centerpiece of America’s economic playbook. In contrast to unilateralism:
“In the field of world policy, I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbor.”
— Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933
John Vidas
April 2025