America’s fundamental strategy of creating trading blocs of approved partners will have disastrous global consequences. The Great Depression in the 1930s was brought on, in part, by U.S. protectionism. The world must now guard against a similar calamity.

The Biden administration’s new tariffs on Chinese goods are primarily symbolic and political, with negligible economic impact, but they aim to protect and foster the U.S. clean energy supply chain, particularly in the EV sector. However, the tariffs are politically motivated and could undermine industrial policy goals by focusing on geopolitical competition rather than applying uniformly to all countries.

While high officials in the Biden administration — and President Joe Biden himself — have repeatedly proclaimed that America does not seek to decouple from China, the latest move to impose extreme tariffs on certain Chinese goods goes in exactly that direction. It’s a bad idea driven by U.S. election year politics.

Washington’s claims of non-compliance by China are a wish list in disguise. It wants to abrogate China’s rights and impose its own will in reshaping the Chinese economic model. So it should be no surprise that it cooked up a way to do that via the World Trade Organization.

New international institutions, mechanisms and laws — as well as the reform and improvement of existing ones — should no longer be dominated by the West. The shaping of a new global order should be done through multilateral cooperation.

America’s professed commitment to the WTO is suspect: What it really wants is to reshape the organization in its own image. By rejecting the WTO ruling against it, the U.S. is putting the teetering trade body at risk.

After the Xi-Biden meeting in Bali, attention should turn in earnest to a global vision in which the two countries share a common obligation — supporting globalization and multilateralism — not only to manage differences but also to avoid economic fragmentation.

The systemic challenge for the U.S. is not China but the worst inflation in 40 years. In fact, fragmentation does not seem to be happening in the real world. Even an Asia-Pacific version of NATO will not likely divide the region, as China will continue to be a major trade partner.

U.S. President Joe Biden often talks about leading the world. But if sanctions are what he meant, and if abusing the national security exception against WTO members is the means, the global economic system would be better off without America.

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