Given this pattern, based on economic history evidence, the possibility of a larger military conflict accentuated by a conflicted US-China dynamic cannot be dismissed. The US in 2025 is targeting China strategically, not just economically. China sees this as containment, not trade policy.
History shows that when trade barriers threaten a nation’s survival, escalation often follows. The trade war could bring the global economy on the brink of recession, by slashing the global GDP by up to 7 percent.
This is similar to the Napoleonic Wars, in which the US was drawn into the War of 1812 as a result of British and French trade restrictions that transformed neutral waters into combat zones. Military might soon become the deciding factor in control of trade waterways.
Similarly, China views US assistance for Taiwan through trade, weaponry, and semiconductors as a component of a larger containment strategy. Similar to the American oil embargo on Japan in 1941, the economic pressure of today can be viewed as a strategic threat that prompts Beijing to take preventative action.
The risk is increased by the WTO’s stagnation, which leaves no credible system in place to settle trade disputes amicably, this might even lead to more than a 1 percent contraction in global trade. This is similar to the 1930s, when retaliatory tariffs, economic isolationism, and poor global governance built the way for World War II.