With Friends Like the U.S., Who Needs Enemies?

Why the U.S. is 'liberating' itself from allies at its own peril.

Photo by Yoav Aziz on Unsplash

According to the Trump White House, today is Liberation Day, when the administration will announce massive tariffs on foreign countries. "The President will be announcing a tariff plan that will roll back the unfair trade practices that have been ripping off our country for decades," said White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt on March 31.

While the size and scope of these tariffs isn't yet clear, America's allies are already quickly distancing themselves from Washington. Chinese state media reported that Japan and South Korea were coordinating their response to the tariffs with Beijing, a remarkable development considering that the two countries are the strongest treaty allies of the U.S. (Japan and South Korea said there was no decision made to coordinate, but that the three countries held their first meeting in five years.) On March 28, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said that the old relationship with the U.S. based on deepening economic and security integration was "over" and that Ottawa would have to "dramatically reduce" its dependence on the U.S. Incoming German Chancellor Frederich Merz, a heretofore dyed-in-the-wool Atlanticist, said last month that Europe would have to strengthen itself to attain "independence" from the U.S.

The U.S. is breaking its strongest alliances with sovereign countries in the Atlantic and Pacific, as well as on its northern border. At the same time, Trump is threatening the sovereignty of Greenland, a self-governing territory of Denmark, and Panama by threatening to wrest control of the Panama Canal. He has even mused about making the war-torn Gaza Strip part of the U.S. 

And for what? There is nothing to be gained by annexing Greenland, the Panama Canal, and Gaza, and everything to lose by shattering the transatlantic and transpacific alliances. It will make European and Asian countries more vulnerable to aggression from Moscow and Beijing. Tariffs will make prices rise and rattle markets: in fact, these things have already started happening and the Trump Administration acknowledges it doesn't care: as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said, "access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream." 

Trump and his administration's diagnosis of alliances is that countries have been freeloading on the U.S., whether by selling cheap goods or relying too heavily on its security umbrella, and it's time they pay up. In the group text published by Atlantic Editor Jeffrey Goldberg, Vice President JD Vance said he hated "bailing out Europe again" by launching military action against Houthi rebels to protect shipping in the Red Sea. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth replied, "I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It's PATHETIC."