America is the biggest, the wealthiest and the most powerful economy in the world. Period.
This fact alone solidifies the often-overlooked and frequently unjustly exploited role of the United States as a decades-long economic stabilizer, provider of charity, and promoter of peace and prosperity, a role that conventional American politicians have also overlooked. The buck stops with President Donald Trump.
The tariffs imposed by Trump have been almost universally condemned worldwide, but economic and trade equations and perspectives are not confined to a single, universal truth.
The US has kept the peace and global financial stability for decades with the dollar dominance and a proven stability precedent, using its own security weight and financial and trade architecture to ensure the security and sanctity of the international law and the global trading and maritime routes, but there is no guarantee that this will be maintained and sustained by other powers if America is weakened.
Other countries have long practised trade and economic protectionism, ranging from currency and tariff manipulation to various non-tariff barriers, but have not seen such level of brouhaha. When Washington decided to fix this imbalance, the world was jolted into a new wave of rage.
This happens primarily because of the conventionally well-tolerated exploitation of America by other nations, which have seen other nations cleverly taking advantage of America’s wealth, technology, and markets that have been foolishly overlooked by previous American leaderships.
With his tariff offensive, Trump is tackling an issue the nation has been avoiding since the end of the gold standard in 1971 — the gaping abyss of fiscal disaster and trade deficits.
Since the Bretton Woods of 1944, the US has shouldered the primary responsibility for the world’s reserve currency — with all the perks and pitfalls that entails.
Powering the engine room of the global economy, the dollar has been the lubricant ever since, with the U.S. supplying banks and debtors by tolerating a chronically growing trade imbalance, right until April 2, 2025, declared “Liberation Day,” the turning point of a grand shift, which actually serves the world good in long term, despite the prevailing negative rage from conventional economists and scholars the world over, including Malaysia.
America has an almost USD 30 trillion GDP, with China being a distant second at USD 18 trillion.
America is by far the world’s wealthiest and most technologically advanced than any other nation on earth. If America continues to weaken economically, financially, and militarily as many would have wanted from the other side, and if this Trump tariff reformation plan is not enacted, it will mean a similar crumble of all of the other nations who depend on America as the sustaining economic support system.
No one nation can survive alone in the long run without being attached to the global trading mechanism and ecosystem that the Americans have built and protected.
This unrivalled economic might, alongside the unmatched military might and deterrence in both conventional and non-conventional warfare, has made America continue to be the de facto leader and stabiliser of the rules-based order based on international law, as well as the guarantor of global peace and security for almost a century since WWII, defeating fascism, communism and the new non-traditional threats of global terrorism.
The world has been complacent, enjoying the long peace for almost a century the end of WWII that is only made possible by the US helming the guardian of the world’s peace and stability, fostering new growth and the ideals of democracy and freedom that elevate human security and protection.
This comes at a cost, and all the while Americans have been paying the financial cost for global stability, from preventing wars to creating new connectivity through the internet and GPS (Washington still pays the cost of the global GPS system annually), and to saving lives with new medical discoveries.
While mistakes and systemic wrongs have occurred throughout the decades under different leaderships, it is still seen as a stabilising force of good for global security and peace.
What Trump is doing now is to fairly ask the rest of the world to pay its fair share and to jointly contribute to this global task.
It is not too much of an ask, and if America crumbles under its own debt and financial ruin or whether caused by the collective efforts of other nations (although this remains highly unlikely for any nation or a consortium of nations to challenge this US supremacy), there is no precedent or guarantee that alternative system that has been so aggressively being promoted will be able to fill the gap, or to provide the same assurances and stability based on the tenets of the rules-based order, sanctity of the rule of law and international law and the spirit of freedom and peace.
Trump is Correcting the Decades-Old Imbalance that Also Threatened Global Trade Stability
The US economy is expected to remain the world’s largest for at least the next decade and beyond, despite the hype surrounding China’s rejuvenation and the quest to overtake Washington, which, to date, has yet to materialize despite repeated adjustments to previously failed projections.
Under Trump, America will correct all past economic and geopolitical mistakes and misadventures and the great American Dream will once again be reignited.
America’s financial and debt crises have for long been ignored by domestic leadership and being ripped off by other nations keen to piggyback on the existing consumer market and demand.
For decades, America has been ripped off through this systemic globalist injustice, which has suppressed wages, forced millions out of their jobs, caused manufacturing firms to move overseas, and plunged the debt crisis further.
If wages are down and unemployment is up, the consuming power will also plummet, and this will also affect demand and, in turn, affect the global economy and the exporting nations.
Remember, a strong, safe, and financially healthy America translates to a strong, safe, and financially healthy world; without it, the decades-old rules based on order, peace, stability, and financial order and assurance will be upended.
What Trump did was correct this decades-old rip-off to ensure that America does not continue to bleed.
The tariffs imposed are thus a common sense measure to stop the bleed, fix the debt and ensure long term fiscal discipline and sustainability.
However, the systemic disdain for Trump has clouded the judgment and the new tariff system has been an easy scapegoat to discredit his efforts further as yet another attempt to destabilise the world economic and trade order.
Yet, his economic and trade plans are pure and simple with a common sense approach. The US currently has USD36 trillion in debt. For this year, America will spend USD6 trillion but will only collect USD4 trillion in revenue, hence it will need to borrow USD2 trillion, which will increase the debt to USD38 trillion.
Trump came out with a three pronged plan to both cut the debt and to bring back wealth to America. Firstly, cut expenses and waged a war on structural wastages and fraud and mismanagement of funds, led by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). This will cut expenses by $1 trillion.
Secondly, to increase revenue by $1 trillion to $2 trillion through tariff reset, deregulations and new money making initiatives such as the gold card. During Trump 1.0, he has managed to cut deregulations and unleashed the hidden power of American energy and manufacturing prowess.
Now, he pushed up the notch to finally recalibrate the flawed tariff model which will generate returns up to $500 billion annually. In a decade’s time, the US will get more than USD5 trillion in returns from tariff recalibration alone.
With increased deregulation, allowing businesses to form more easily, an enhanced meritocracy, and tax cuts for manufacturing firms to return, the percentage of wealth is expected to increase.
The new brainchild of the gold card initiative by Trump means more revenue. If 100,000 people are issued this card worldwide, it will result in an additional $1 trillion in incremental revenue.
Third, with all the added revenue from the new initiatives and the cut in wastages, surplus will be seen for the first time, and this can be used to cut taxes further, alleviating any concerns that these tariff hikes on all countries will increase inflation for the American people. With reduced corporate tax to around 15%, the US will become the epicentre of business and manufacturing driven hubs in the world, and wealth and technologies and critical resources will return.
With a stronger US in both military and economic terms, the world will, in turn, receive the intended positive spillover effects, similar to those enjoyed for decades under the US-led international economic and trade umbrella, as well as the security assurances for maritime safety, connectivity, and stability.
Despite the brouhaha on the market and stocks meltdown, the markets will eventually adjust, and that this is a necessary short term adjustment and transitional pain to pave the way for long term financial resilience and returns to not only the US, but the world as well.
As Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated, the global financial market will recover once they know what the rules are, and that the markets are crashing because markets are based on the stock value of companies who today are embedded in modes of production that are bad for the United States.
Tariffs are essentially a tax on other nations, plain and simple.
Despite all the economic terms and justifications stating otherwise, tariffs are imposed because other nations will essentially pay more to the US, simply due to the unique status and position of the US as the primary consuming market and economy in the world.
No other nation can replace this position of the US.
Even if prices rise due to the tariff, wealth will increase in parallel with the energy boom, and inflationary pressure will ease due to lower gas prices and higher wages resulting from more jobs and enterprises returning.
Trump is all for simple , common-sense understanding where other nations have long been capitalising on this unfair tax and trade loophole in which America has been charged higher in other countries for their goods, while foreign goods have a field day making inroads into the American market. All these are on top of the other non tariff barriers including dumping, currency and trade manipulation and IP theft which continue to cripple the American economic resilience.
Tariffs can cause the US dollar to strengthen, which will strengthen its dominant position as the world’s unmatched reserve and trade currency.
Those seeking to retaliate by counter tariffs will only see backfiring implications. The US is the biggest customer on Earth. Americans consume $20 trillion every year. They are the biggest importer, importing $3 trillion every year.
In short, the world needs America. Not the other way around.
The Future is Still with America, Not the Rise of the Rest
This new tariff structure imposed by Trump has further fuelled the sentiments for the escalation of this move to channel our market, export and focus on these regions and entities as the new dependence for our diversification efforts.
It simply does not work that way. America remains the foremost and primary market in the world, and this will be sustained in the long future. Its demographic prospects are yet to bear their full potential, and it will have more sustainable demographic returns as compared to China and India both in terms of wealth, education, and working age capacities.
Apart from the demographic resilience, America’s own economic and technological dominance is hard to be matched, and with Trump’s new swift changes and reforms to America’s fiscal, military, political and human capital superiority, more wealth, hard power, and economic power will return to the country with common sense energy, trade, economic and geopolitical policies.
Overdependence on the so-called prospects of the alternative invites greater risks due to the unpredictable resilience and sustaining economic potential of the economic powers behind this move to dislodge the US-dominated system.
Efforts to diversify market and trade dependence can only yield so much, with lesser returns in the long term, as these alternatives lack the fundamentals of the entire US economic stability and offerings.
The global trading system itself has serious deficiencies, whereas nations continue to suffer from other nations’ economic tools including currency and trade manipulation.
ASEAN continues to suffer from internal economicand growth gap and competition and security dilemma and wariness, and in the long term, it simply does not have the required technological, economic, and security capacity to match America in terms of trade market and consumer demand and technological and resource capacity.
It lacks far behind the US in terms of sustaining purchasing power, market maturity, the spirit of innovation and free enterprise and demographic quality despite the hype about ASEAN’s combined pool of economic and trade potential.
It also still suffers from deep divide on power rivalry and external affiliation to both the West and China.
The same goes for other powers in the Global South or BRICS, being unable to match the US in terms of the sustaining values driven fundamentals in the ecosystem of democratic ideals, spirit of freedom and check and balances and the rule of law.
Others have predictably argued that the rise of domestic markets and the economic power of China and ASEAN can replace the US as the primary driver of growth and market dependence in the pursuit of these new guardrails and friend-shoring for Malaysia.
China is facing its own domestic real estate, unemployment, fiscal, demographic, and entrepreneurial setbacks and stagnation. The BRICS continue to face internal headwinds and divisions, and for years now, there has been no strong prospect for a common market or currency, despite the hype.
The Global South remains sluggish with no real firepower and future-sustaining predictability and offerings of resilient economic fundamentals and robust internal governance of self-sustenance, unlike the US.
Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson’s four indicators of a nation’s sustaining prowess in their works in Why Nations Fail: Extractive vs. Inclusive Institutions, Political Institutions, Economic Institutions and Intertwined Historical and Institutional Legacy, all point in favour of America, possesing the edge in all four sustaining power indicators.
Projections of Beijing overtaking Washington as the world’s biggest economy have never materialised, despite multiple adjustments of the so called timelines where the throne of the global economic power finally changes. It might not happen at all, given current trajectories and how Trump is reshaping America’s long-hidden power potential in all power indicators, from energy dominance to getting the wealth and control back in the hands of Washington and the continuous unrivalled military prowess.
Under Trump, the American economy is expected to continue strengthening. Three months in since his inauguration, more than USD5 trillion has now rolled in in the form of external pledges of investments and relocation of manufacturing hubs and firms, as well as the cutting of expenses and wastages and the restructuring of the economy and the energy industry.
Employers in the United States added 228,000 workers to their payrolls in March.
The workforce participation rate climbed from 62.4 percent to 62.5 percent. The strong jobs number is the latest piece of economic data suggesting the economy remains on a solid footing.
A More Prosperous and Safer America is a More Prosperous and Safer World
Trump’s vision for global prosperity was built on the foundation of a strong, independent American economy. By slashing corporate tax rates and reducing regulatory burdens, he spurred investment and job growth by bringing back wealth, factories and jobs back to the country.
His tax cuts weren’t just for the wealthy, they benefited ordinary workers, small businesses, and entire industries that had been stagnating for years. His focus on unleashing America’s energy potential and regaining the status as the world’s premier energy power and redefining trade relationship with the world, all ultimately foster greater economic stability worldwide in the long term.
Trump’s policies demonstrated that a strong U.S. economy is key not only to American prosperity but to global prosperity and stability as well. His approach to taxation, trade, and energy policy laid the foundation for a future of economic dominance that could last for decades.
Trump’s leadership is the key to reclaiming America’s global economic dominance and ensuring a future of continued peace, prosperity, and security for the world.
The US economy has been the most resilient consistently since Covid, and this is a fact that people have failed to recognise. With Trump now back in power, the economic fundamentals are expected to strengthen further with this pro-business and pro-energy approach, leading to a resurgence of wealth and jobs within the country through the renegotiation of trade deals, tariffs, and strategic agreements on critical resources.
With the world’s strongest military and most powerful economy at his disposal, Donald Trump’s task is to ensure that America is great again and in reviving the American Dream, both of which he is now on the verge on accomplishing.
His track record of economic success, diplomatic ingenuity, and commitment to peace gives him the rare combination of skills and opening needed to restore America’s place at the top of the world stage, and hence, the eventual path towards global stability and prosperity.
The world needs a safe, strong, resilient, and sustainable United States of America for the equal returns of a safer and stronger world. Trump is making this happen. The rest of the world should, too.
