Great article, Nicholas! I completely agree with your assessment on Trump’s treatment of our allies. It’s counterproductive and threatens to undermine not just our economic influence, but our cultural influence as well, seeing as how the two are tied together. And that makes me wonder how much of an impact Trump’s policies might have on various human rights campaigns in various authoritarian societies, China included.

I do have a question for you, though. You mentioned China’s industrial espionage and disregard for IP rights. Trump is correct (in my view) that we can’t just brush that behavior off. We have to respond more forcefully; past presidents were too circumspect in their approach to this problem. But if tariffs aren’t the way to do it, what alternatives would you suggest that wouldn’t lead to some kind of trade war? Because it seems to me that there aren’t a lot of good options on the table.