Paris (Imran Y. CHOUDHRY) :- Former Press Secretary to the President, Former Press Minister to the Embassy of Pakistan to France, Former MD, SRBC Mr. Qamar Bashir analysis : The return of Donald Trump to power in January 2024 did not mark a routine political shift inside the United States. It detonated a geopolitical shockwave that began tearing apart alliances built over nearly a century. What followed was not slow diplomatic drift, but the violent collision of political tectonic plates. Relationships forged in the ruins of two world wars—between the United States, Europe, and Canada—began cracking in real time, while new balances of power were built at a pace that stunned analysts and strategists alike.
For decades, Europe and North America were welded together by NATO, by trade integration, and by a shared narrative of democracy, human rights, and collective security. Canada stood as the most loyal extension of this Western framework. Its economy was fused with that of the United States through NAFTA and later the USMCA. Nearly three-quarters of Canadian exports flowed south. Energy, automobiles, agriculture, defense production, and technology supply chains functioned as one system. Canadian soldiers fought alongside American forces from Korea to Afghanistan. Ottawa followed Washington into wars it did not initiate. The assumption was simple: this alliance was permanent.
That assumption collapsed. The Trump administration revived tariffs as a blunt political weapon, striking Canadian steel, aluminum, and industrial exports while openly signaling that economic dependence could be used as leverage. At the same time, Washington escalated a broader posture of intimidation across its alliances and beyond. Rhetoric surrounding Greenland reframed the island not as a sovereign territory under Danish authority, but as a strategic asset to be claimed. This was not read in Europe as a joke or a bargaining tactic—it was understood as a warning: even allies could be treated as geopolitical real estate.
For the European Union, this was a breaking point. The idea that sovereignty itself could be subjected to transactional power politics shattered the post-war illusion of inviolable partnership. Brussels, Paris, Berlin, and the Nordic capitals began turning inward. The long-debated concept of “strategic autonomy” moved from academic language to active policy. Europe accelerated defense integration, expanded independent security planning, and strengthened coordination around the Arctic, Greenland, and the North Atlantic—not to deter Russia or China, but to insulate itself from the unpredictability of the United States.
Canada felt the shock just as deeply. The same country that had built its national security, economy, and foreign policy around American partnership now found itself treated as a subordinate rather than a sovereign equal. When Washington floated the language of absorption—of Canada as a “51st state”—it crossed a psychological line in Ottawa. The message was not subtle: dependence was no longer mutual. It was leverage.
Canada responded with a historic pivot. Trade diversification, long discussed but never prioritized, became national strategy. The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with the European Union was elevated from policy option to economic lifeline. Engagement across the Indo-Pacific intensified. Most significantly, Canada reopened and expanded channels with China in areas that had traditionally been dominated by the United States—energy technology, agriculture, electric vehicle supply chains, critical minerals, Arctic research, and infrastructure investment. What began as commercial outreach quickly took on strategic meaning: Canada was building an alternative economic and technological anchor.
Europe moved in the same direction. While maintaining NATO ties, the EU expanded high-level engagement with Beijing on climate finance, renewable energy, digital infrastructure, and industrial standards. European leaders did not frame this as ideological alignment, but as counterbalancing. If Washington was willing to use trade, security, and sovereignty as pressure tools, Europe would build parallel relationships to reduce its exposure.
This realignment was not driven by economics alone. It was shaped by Washington’s expanding use of kinetic power abroad. Continued U.S. military support for Israel’s campaign in Gaza, combined with repeated air operations in the Middle East and counterterrorism strikes across parts of Africa, reinforced a global image of a superpower defaulting to force rather than diplomacy. In the Western Hemisphere, sharp rhetoric and pressure tactics aimed at Venezuela, Cuba, and other Latin American governments revived long-standing fears of economic coercion and political intervention.
Against this backdrop, China’s model appeared fundamentally different. Beijing did not offer military protection or ideological partnership. It offered roads, ports, railways, industrial parks, energy corridors, and financing. Through the Belt and Road Initiative, China poured hundreds of billions of dollars into infrastructure across Asia, Africa, Latin America, and parts of Europe. In Central Asia, it built transit corridors linking east to west. In Africa, it constructed ports and industrial zones. In Latin America, it invested in logistics hubs and energy projects. In the Arctic, it established research stations, icebreaker missions, and scientific cooperation with Nordic partners.
This was influenced without occupation. Power without troops. Integration instead of intimidation. For Canada and Europe, this approach offered a strategic counterweight. Engagement with China became a way to balance Washington’s dominance, not replace it entirely, but dilute its ability to dictate terms. Joint research initiatives, green technology partnerships, and trade expansion were not merely economic—they were geopolitical insurance policies.
This is the tectonic change now underway. Canada, once the most reliable extension of American economic and strategic space, is constructing parallel networks. Europe, once anchored unconditionally to Washington, is building its own security, industrial, and diplomatic architecture. The Global South, from Brazil to Central Asia, is expanding partnerships that bypass traditional Western gatekeepers.
The contrast between the two superpower strategies is stark. The United States increasingly relies on tariffs, sanctions, military deployment, and political pressure. China relies on infrastructure, investment, trade integration, and long-term development financing. One model seeks compliance. The other seeks dependence.
What makes this moment historically dangerous is the speed at which trust has collapsed. Alliances built over generations are being tested in a single political cycle. Strategic assumptions that once anchored global stability are being discarded in real time.
The tectonic plates of global order have shifted. The world is no longer organized around a single center of gravity. It is fragmenting into competing spheres of influence, overlapping partnerships, and strategic hedges.
Whether this leads to balance or breakdown will depend not on the ambitions of Washington or Beijing alone, but on how far Canada, Europe, and the rest of the world continue down the path of building a system designed not around loyalty—but around insulation from power itself.

Paris (Imran Y. CHOUDHRY) :- Former Press Secretary to the President, Former Press Minister to the Embassy of Pakistan to France, Former MD, SRBC Mr. Qamar Bashir analysis : When Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, he entered office with a renewed conviction that China was the central threat to America’s economic supremacy. During his campaign he promised to impose the “highest tariffs ever placed on another nation,” and within weeks of taking office he announced a broad tariff package that lifted the average rate on Chinese imports to levels not seen in modern U.S. history. The administration framed it as a strategic correction to decades of unfair Chinese trade practices, but what unfolded over the first months of the new tariff war revealed a very different picture: China absorbing the shock, recalibrating supply chains, and emerging stronger, while the United States confronted rising costs, diplomatic fractures, and strategic vulnerabilities it had underestimated.
The backbone of the 2025 tariff package was a sweeping 50 percent levy on a wide category of Chinese industrial goods, consumer electronics, batteries, EV components, and machinery. This instantly reshaped the cost structure for American importers. U.S. Customs data for the first half of 2025 showed Chinese imports dropping sharply, falling from $427 billion in 2024 to an annualized pace below $300 billion. The White House celebrated this as proof of success. But a closer look by the Federal Reserve and private research groups painted a darker reality: the tariffs did not revive American manufacturing; they simply diverted sourcing to Vietnam, Mexico, India, and Malaysia, often for the very same Chinese-made components routed through partner countries. Prices for American consumers rose, corporate costs increased, and inflationary pressure resurfaced at a moment when the administration hoped to claim victory over rising prices.
Even more troubling for Washington was the fiscal contradiction that unfolded almost immediately. Although the administration touted billions collected in tariffs as a demonstration of strength, those very funds had to be redirected to rescue the sectors devastated by Trump’s own tariff shock. Agriculture was the first casualty. As China reduced forward contracts and diversified grain, meat, and oilseed imports away from the United States, American farmers faced sudden price drops, unsold inventories, and shrinking export volumes.
To prevent political and financial collapse in farm states, the Trump administration authorized a $9 billion bailout package in Dec-2025. In effect, money the government collected through tariffs was immediately paid back out to the very industries harmed by the policy. This circular flow of revenue defeated the central logic of tariff imposition. A tariff meant to punish China wound up punishing American producers instead, while China sidestepped the pain by shifting its procurement elsewhere. The policy, which was sold as a tool to strengthen America, became economically self-defeating from its first months of implementation.
USDA’s July 2025 export report showed a noticeable softening in forward contracts to China, and analysts warned that the United States was losing ground in markets it once considered secure. The shift was subtle but irreversible: China no longer depended on the United States as a primary food supplier in 2025, a strategic transformation with long-term consequences.
The deepest U.S. vulnerability, however, lay in advanced manufacturing inputs. China entered 2025 still controlling more than 85 percent of the world’s rare-earth processing capacity and over 90 percent of high-strength magnet production. Within months of the new American tariffs, Chinese regulators slowed export licensing for neodymium and praseodymium magnets—core components for American EV motors, military guidance systems, medical equipment, and renewable energy technologies. U.S. firms across aerospace, automotive, and defense reported delays and rising costs. The Pentagon raised internal alarms that domestic stockpiles were insufficient for a prolonged commercial disruption.
This pressure forced the United States back to the negotiation table sooner than anticipated. By late summer 2025, behind-the-scenes discussions between Washington and Beijing produced a partial easing of China’s export control enforcement in exchange for the United States scaling back parts of the 50 percent tariff tranche. The revised rate for several industrial categories fell closer to 10–15 percent, reflecting an unspoken acknowledgment that the U.S. economy could not sustain the confrontation without jeopardizing its own technological capacity. Officials avoided calling it a retreat, but markets understood it clearly: America’s leverage in the tariff war was far weaker than it appeared.
As economic tensions intensified, geopolitical dynamics shifted dramatically. Europe, long America’s foundational ally, began charting a more independent course. The most symbolic moment came in December 2025, when French President Emmanuel Macron undertook a multi-day state visit to China that included meetings with Xi Jinping in Beijing and Guangzhou, cultural engagements, and a highly publicized walk among Chinese citizens—an unprecedented gesture of diplomatic warmth. Germany deepened EV and battery cooperation with Chinese firms, while the European Commission resisted U.S. requests to impose parallel tariffs on Chinese goods, arguing that Europe needed stability, not retaliation. The message was unmistakable: Washington’s unpredictability was driving Europe to diversify its strategic relationships.
Canada’s recalibration was more subtle but equally significant. Diplomatic disagreements over minerals, technology cooperation, and U.S. extraterritorial trade measures strained relations. Ottawa expanded trade dialogues with Beijing and pursued independent access to Chinese markets for agriculture, wood products, and minerals. By mid-2025, Canadian officials publicly emphasized the need for “balanced engagement” with both global powers—a diplomatic signal not seen in decades. America’s traditional sphere of influence was shrinking, not through conflict but through erosion of trust in Washington’s long-term policy consistency.
While the United States confronted inflationary pressure and strained alliances, China’s macroeconomic position continued strengthening. MOFCOM reported a trade surplus of $798 billion in 2024, and the first six months of 2025 indicated a similar trajectory despite reduced exports to the United States. The explanation was simple: China expanded exports to Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe, partially compensating for the American market. Beijing also increased domestic demand stimulus, targeted high-tech investment, and pushed forward EV, robotics, and solar manufacturing expansions. Far from weakening, China’s export engine rebalanced toward new partners, reinforcing its status as the world’s manufacturing hub.
Even more significant was the perception shift globally. Nations increasingly viewed China as the more predictable partner in long-term economic planning. The U.S. political cycle—with sharp reversals every four years—introduced uncertainty that businesses, governments, and investors found destabilizing. China, by contrast, offered continuity. Whether one agrees with its political system or not, Beijing delivered reliability, and in global commerce, reliability is currency.
Inside the United States, the consequences became visible. Importers faced higher costs, consumers encountered rising prices, farmers saw shrinking access to China, manufacturers struggled with supply chain bottlenecks, and strategic allies questioned American dependability. The tariff war, intended to reassert American power, instead exposed structural weaknesses that had been growing for years: inequality, fragile supply chains, political polarization, and an economic model increasingly dependent on global components that America no longer produced.
Yet the lesson is not that the United States is in decline. It remains an extraordinary nation with vast resources, unmatched innovation, and resilient institutions. But the 2025 tariff confrontation with China revealed a profound strategic miscalculation. China did not defeat America; America undermined itself by acting without a full appreciation of the interconnected global systems on which its own prosperity depends. A course correction is still possible, but it requires rebuilding alliances, stabilizing economic policy, investing in domestic capability, and recognizing that leadership is earned not through confrontation alone but through consistency, partnership, and trust.
In 2025, China won the tariff war not by overpowering the United States but by understanding the world better than Washington understood itself. The question now is whether America can learn quickly enough to avoid repeating the same mistake.

King Maha Vajiralongkorn of Thailand has arrived in China on Wednesday, the first ever visit by a reigning Thai monarch.

The visit is at the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping to celebrate the 50th anniversary of both countries establishing diplomatic ties for the first time in 1975. China is believed to have been pushing for this visit for some years.

The Thai government said in a statement that the trip “underlines the deep-rooted friendship and mutual understanding shared between Thailand and China at all levels”.

In Beijing, the king and his wife Queen Suthida will visit local landmarks like the Lingguang Buddhist Temple and the Beijing Aerospace City.

President Xi and his wife will also host a state banquet for the Thai royals.

This is the first major state visit by King Vajiralongkorn since he came to the throne nine years ago – in April he also made a trip to Bhutan. By contrast the most high-profile overseas trips made by his father King Bhumibol were to the United States in the 1960s, when Thailand was feted as a crucial Cold War partner, and a vital base for US military operations in Indochina.

Thailand is still officially a military ally of the US, but relations with China have grown steadily closer in recent years, while those with Washington have been frayed by US criticism of human rights in Thailand, by President Trump’s tariffs, and a perception that the US is no longer as committed as it once was to its Asian friends.

China is Thailand’s biggest trading partner, and increasingly a rival to the US as a source of military equipment.

Many Thais can trace their ancestry to migrants who came from China, and the Chinese government often highlights what it calls their “brotherly” or “family” relations.

The importance of those ties to Thailand was underlined earlier this year when the Thai authorities deported 40 Uyghur asylum-seekers back to China, in defiance of a warning not to do so by the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Then in August an exhibition at Bangkok’s main arts centre featuring Uyghur and Tibetan artists was censored following complaints by Chinese diplomats.

The Thai government was spurred by Chinese pressure into taking action against scam compounds operating along its border with Myanmar, and objections by China are presumed to have been one of the factors which blocked a proposal to legalise casinos in Thailand.

Despite the lack of a Thai royal visit before this one, the Thai monarchy has played a significant role in sustaining Thai-Chinese relations through the work of the king’s younger sister, Princess Sirindhorn, who has studied Chinese art and language for the past 45 years, and been a frequent visitor to China.