The American Odyssey & The Case for Liberation
The American economy and character was defined by what it built — steel mills and shipyards, farms and factories — forging not just its goods but its animus — the vital force that animated its national spirit. Today, America defines itself by that which it consumes. Like an ornamented man bedecked in finery, it displays superficial glitz (record stock market valuations, abundant cheap imports) even as its manufacturing backbone atrophies. The statistics bear out this story:
After decades of laissez-faire globalization, the deindustrialization of America is stark. In 1979, approximately 19 million Americans worked in manufacturing — nearly one in seven adults aged 18–65 in a country of around 137 million working-age people. Today, the United States has well over 200 million working-age adults, yet only about 12 million of them hold manufacturing jobs — roughly one in sixteen. Put differently, manufacturing’s share of the working-age population has plummeted by more than half. Approx. 70,000 plant closures accompanied this demise.
By 2022, the U.S. trade deficit in goods and services reached a record $948 billion (about 3.7% of GDP ), including an eye-popping $1.19 trillion goods trade deficit partly offset by a shrinking services surplus. More than a third of this gap — some $383 billion — was due to trade with China alone . Yet these massive imbalances are not mere statistics; they signify millions of jobs lost, decades worth of factories shuttered, and a dangerous erosion of national self-sufficiency.
This collapse in domestic productive capacity carries profound strategic consequences. A country that cannot produce what it wants and needs — from semiconductors to steel — stands vulnerable. In the spirit of the old proverb, “for want of a nail, the shoe was lost… for want of a horse, the battle… and for want of a battle, the kingdom was lost,” America is now awakening to the reality that even seemingly small economic dependencies can spiral into perilous strategic liabilities.
Thus, “liberating” American commerce means freeing the nation from the shackles of unsustainable deficits and dependence on foreign production. It is a call to recalibrate strategy — to restore balance and sovereignty to U.S. economic policy. This is not a plunge into autarky for its own sake, but a reasoned response to a lopsided global environment. For years, Washington pursued trade liberalization under the assumption that market forces alone would guarantee mutual prosperity. Instead, we saw what Friedrich List, the 19th-century economist, cautioned against: nations that “subordinate the interests of the human race as a whole to their national interests” taking advantage of those that open their markets without restraint . America’s generous openness, in many cases, has been met with mercantilist strategies abroad — massive export subsidies, closed markets, currency manipulation, and predatory pricing — leaving U.S. workers and industries to “suffer what they must,” to borrow Thucydides’ timeless phrase. If the U.S. has been Melos in the global trade arena — admonished that “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must” — then the urgent task is to stop acting the part of the weak. In economic statecraft as in geopolitics, strength respects strength.
The Ornamented Man stands as a mirror to America today: a once muscular figure now stiff with gilded ornament, less an active maker than a passive display. It invites us to introspection and doubt: Have we mistaken wealth’s appearance for its essence? The classical philosophers cautioned against such confusion. As Plato wrote, “A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.” In our context, we must recognize that GDP figures and stock indices — the numbers — can mislead if they rise on the back of de-industrialization and debt. True knowledge of our economic health requires looking at our productive core. By that measure, the cracks in the ornament are evident. American deindustrialization has meant not just economic deficits but also cultural and social ones: skilled trades lost, pride of workmanship diminished, communities uprooted. The Ornamented Man, richly patterned but internally weakened, is a call to acknowledge this reality. Only by understanding the depth of the decline can we gather the will to reverse it.
The Moon and The Sun: Between Passive Openness and Strategic Assertion
For decades, American economic policy drifted under a passive openness, reflecting New Aged idealism that commerce naturally brings harmony. In this paradigm, the U.S. kept its markets wide open, assuming others would do likewise and that the invisible hand of global free trade would ensure mutual gain. This mindset reached its zenith under the dogma that “the world is flat” and globalization is destiny. Under its glow, leaders dismantled trade barriers, welcomed foreign goods and capital, and downplayed the loss of domestic industry as a benign evolution. Americans were told that embracing global competition would make the economy more efficient and consumers better off, even if some jobs left for cheaper shores. This was the cosmopolitan dream of perpetual night illuminated by foreign-made neon — comfortable, perhaps, but ultimately a reflected light reliant on others’ fire.
Yet against this stood the archetype of the sun — an opposing philosophy of strategic assertion, harkening back to Apollo’s attributes of self-fulfilling prophecy. This view revives an ancient understanding: that economic policy is as much about power and security as about prices and efficiency. As the Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz might rephrase it, trade is war by other means — “the logic of war in the grammar of commerce.” Modern analysts note that commerce is being “weaponized to engender uneven…development, accomplishing the object of war by other means.” In plain terms, nations have not hesitated to use tariffs, subsidies, and market access as weapons to advance their own prosperity at others’ (and especially America’s) expense.
History furnishes abundant wisdom that prosperous trade and national power emerge not from unilateral commercial disarmament, but from strategic nurturing of domestic capabilities. The United States’ own rise to industrial greatness was predicated on a bold departure from doctrinaire free trade. Alexander Hamilton, in his 1791 Report on Manufactures, argued that “not only the wealth, but the independence and security of a country, appear to be materially connected with the prosperity of manufactures.” Every nation, Hamilton urged, “ought to endeavor to possess within itself all the essentials of national supply” . The young American republic, lacking a robust navy or industrial base, took this lesson to heart: tariffs and industrial policies in the 19th century protected infant industries until the U.S. became the workshop of the world. As Hamilton warned, a country unable to supply its own essentials would “feel the effects” in any crisis — a warning vindicated when the Union’s industrial superiority proved decisive in the Civil War.
Even the patron saint of free trade, Adam Smith, recognized exceptions where national security trumps market efficiency. Smith famously supported Britain’s restrictive Navigation Acts, calling them “perhaps the wisest of all the commercial regulations of England” because “defense…is of much more importance than opulence.” In other words, it avails a nation little to import cheap goods if, in the process, it loses the ability to defend itself or project power. A century later, Friedrich List expanded this logic, observing that cosmopolitan theories of free markets ignore that nations (not just individuals) compete. List argued that true freedom of exchange can only exist between mutual respect amongst industrial peers. As he wrote, “the arguments of [the free trade school] in favor of free competition are thus only applicable to the exchange between those who belong to one and the same nation. Every great nation, therefore, must endeavor to form an aggregate within itself…so far only as intercourse [with others] is suitable to its own interests.”
That wisdom is echoed across eras. Ancient strategists understood the link between economic might and national survival. Cicero declared that “the sinews of war are infinite money” — a maxim that underscores how a rich, productive economy underwrites military and geopolitical power. And in more recent memory, the Allied victory in World War II rode on the arsenal of America’s unmatched productive capacity. It was U.S. factories — cars converted to tanks, typewriters to rifles — that proved decisive. Economic strength and industrial depth equated to strategic dominance.
Today, however, America’s industrial sinews have been allowed to atrophy in the name of efficiency and comparative advantage. Comparative advantage theory, first articulated by David Ricardo, indeed teaches that each nation should specialize where it is most efficient and trade for the rest — and for many years, U.S. policy treated this as an almost moral truth. Yet that classical theory assumed a world of many producers, none able to manipulate the system — not a world where a single country can capture 45% of global manufacturing output (as China is on pace to do by 2030, up from just 6% in 2000) . The theory assumed trade balances would eventually equalize via currency adjustments and rising wages in surplus nations — but instead, the U.S. has run chronic deficits, while countries like China and Germany entrenched surpluses. And the theory certainly never contemplated a scenario where foreign adversaries might weaponize economic dependencies — using control of critical minerals, electronics, or pharmaceuticals as leverage. In short, what might work on a blackboard or in an 18th-century English port can utterly fail in the 21st-century geoeconomic arena.
The call for a “strategic recalibration” of American commerce is thus not a rejection of trade per se, but a return to balance — a recognition, long rooted in history, that productive power is the bedrock of national power. In our era, trade policy has been the continuation of geopolitical strategy by other means: rivals have used economic tools to achieve what armies once did. China, for example, leverages state-driven industrial expansion to command global supply chains (from 5G telecom gear to solar panels), gaining influence without firing a shot. To remain naïve about this — to treat trade as a purely economic domain detached from power — is to risk national weakness. We would do well to remember Clausewitz’s dictum that in war (and we are in an economic war of sorts), the side that better aligns means with strategic ends prevails. America must align its economic policy with strategic imperatives, recognizing that free trade cannot be an unconditional principle when others pursue power and profit by any means necessary.
The mythic duality of Moon and Sun thus captures America’s dilemma: Do we remain a lunar economy, content to reflect the forces of globalization, basking in cheap imports and financial flows while our industrial base fades? Or do we become a solar economy once more, radiant and self-reliant, directing light outward — that is, leading with a national strategy that secures their own prosperity? The answer requires reconciling idealism with realism. Even John Maynard Keynes, a stalwart of liberal economics, came to recognize the need for balance. During the 1930s he wrote, “I would sympathize with those who would minimize, rather than with those who would maximize, economic entanglement among nations…Let goods be homespun whenever it is reasonably and conveniently possible, and, above all, let finance be primarily local.” Here speaks the voice of experience amid crisis: Keynes realized that unfettered globalization could undermine national stability and that some insulation — some home production and control — was not only a “luxury” but perhaps a necessity.
In our time, the pendulum swung hard toward openness, and the costs are everywhere evident. The United States allowed its comparative advantage in many sectors to be eclipsed by a manufactured dependence. We assumed a posture of Diana, goddess of the hunt but by moonlight — an odd mix of pursuit and passivity — whereas our competitors embraced Apollo’s blinding confidence, hunting by daylight with clear aim. The result? America’s economic cosmos fell out of balance. It is time to declare that the long night of purely passive globalization is over. We must welcome a new dawn — a return to strategic assertion in economic policy, where we actively shape outcomes in our favor. In doing so, we do not abandon the benefits of trade; we simply insist on fair trade, reciprocity, and the right to cultivate vital industries at home. As Clausewitz knew and Hamilton concurred, the state has not only the right but the duty to ensure its people are not made defenseless in the mercantile struggles among nations. The Moon and Sun together mark the cycle of renewal: after a period of darkness, the first rays of a new sun announce the opportunity to act with purpose once more.
Derelict Vessel: Reckoning with Strategic Drift
America’s laissez-faire voyage through globalization has, in truth, run aground, leaving a derelict vessel in its wake. The grand ship of state — our commercial republic — increasingly finds itself battered by forces it chose not to master. We outsourced our compass to the “free market,” dismantled our protective hull of tariffs and industrial policy, and assumed calm seas would last forever. Instead, we have weathered storm after storm: the devastation of the Rust Belt as entire industries sank; the supply chain crisis of recent years where life-saving medical gear and semiconductor chips were scarce because we had ceded their production to distant shores; the energy crunches reminding us that even the fuel of commerce can be weaponized by others. Each crisis has been a harsh reminder that a nation adrift, without control of its economic destiny, risks shipwreck when the global tides turn.
Critics often frame any move away from pure free trade as a descent into protectionism that will invite disaster. We are warned of Smoot-Hawley and the Great Depression, of price spikes and trade wars that harm everyone. Such critiques deserve to be engaged strategically and rhetorically, for they represent mainstream economic thought. Let us do so with clarity and force:
- Critique: “Tariffs are a tax on consumers. They raise prices and hurt more people than they help.” — Mainstream economists often highlight that tariffs — such as those implemented during the first Trump administration — modestly raised consumer prices and contributed to some job losses in downstream sectors. While it’s true that broad-based tariffs come with costs, the core counterpoint is that these are strategic costs — tolerable, and ultimately beneficial. Just as one might endure the side effects of a vaccine to build long-term immunity, the economy can absorb short-term price increases as the necessary cost of regaining industrial resilience and national leverage. Rather than being a blunt blow to consumers, across-the-board tariffs act as a catalyst for reviving domestic production capacity, especially in sectors hollowed out by decades of offshoring. Across the board tariffs prevent bad actors from cheating the intent by moving production across boarders to avoid tariffs. Without across the board tariffs, bad actors win.
- Critique: “Protectionism kills jobs; remember the farmers hurt by retaliations.” — Critics point out that after U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods, China slapped tariffs on U.S. soybeans, causing pain to American farmers, who required relief payments . The reality is that any major policy shift creates winners and losers; the key is to assist and reposition the losers, not abandon the policy. In strategic trade, this means pairing tariffs with adjustment assistance — e.g. helping farmers find new markets (as was done via deals with other grain-importing nations) or pivot to new crops. Over the long run, diversifying export outlets actually strengthens the farm sector’s resilience, just as diversifying import sources or boosting local production strengthens the industrial base. The notion that free trade is always net job-creating also ignores the massive job losses incurred under status quo policies (millions of manufacturing jobs lost to offshoring, as noted). Rebalancing trade can shift jobs from import-dependent retail and logistics into manufacturing and tech. An economy that makes more high-value goods at home may have fewer Dollar Store clerks but more machinists and engineers — a trade-off that could mean higher wages and a stronger middle class. As Keynes wisely noted, “a moderate increase in the real cost of imports consequent on greater national self-sufficiency may cease to be of serious consequence when weighed against advantages of a different kind.”
- Critique: “America shouldn’t turn its back on the world; we need engagement to spur innovation and growth.” — Absolutely. Economic nationalism need not mean isolation. The goal of strategic recalibration is not to end trade, but to trade on fair and sovereign terms. We can remain deeply engaged — selling Boeing jets, software, and farm goods abroad; buying coffee, rare earths, and specialty goods we truly lack — while insisting on reciprocity and guarding strategic sectors. Friedrich Hayek praised the free market for allowing “millions of decision-makers to respond individually to freely determined prices” in a way no planner could mimic . That insight remains valid within a nation or among genuinely open economies. But when foreign governments blatantly plan their economies (through subsidies, state-owned enterprises, and industrial espionage), the playing field isn’t genuinely free. America’s strategic stance, then, is not to reject Hayek’s wisdom, but to ensure the market can function as intended — which may mean countering others’ interventions with our own defensive measures. We seek a global trading system where markets set prices, not communist party cadres or oligarchic cartels. To get there, the U.S. must sometimes push back against distortions — for example, imposing anti-dumping duties to stop foreign manufacturers from selling below cost to destroy our industries, or leveraging tariff threats to open closed markets abroad. These actions aren’t anti-market; they defend the conditions for real market competition.
- Critique: “Comparative advantage means everyone wins; don’t try to make what’s cheaper elsewhere.” — This core tenet of standard economics falters if comparative advantages are created by unfair means. China did not simply “happen” to have a comparative advantage in solar panels or telecom equipment; it engineered one by lavishing tens of billions in subsidies, providing cheap state credit, and shielding its home market. Traditional theory would have Britain making cloth and Portugal wine — not one country (say, China) making everything while another de-industrializes. Strategic trade policy recognizes that some advantages are artificially created and thus can be countered. It also recognizes dynamic advantages: a nation might initially lack an edge in, say, microchips, but by investing in education, R&D, and temporarily protecting the sector, it can develop a homegrown industry that eventually becomes world-class. This is how South Korea went from a poverty-stricken agrarian society to a tech manufacturing powerhouse in a generation — not by strictly adhering to its initial endowments, but by deliberately changing them. America itself did this in earlier eras. To regain that spirit is not to defy economics, but to broaden it: to align near-term policy with long-term national interest and technological evolution.
Reckoning with the shipwreck of the past decades means above all, rejecting fatalism. There is nothing inevitable about national decline if we choose to act. America possesses immense strengths — a large domestic market, a tradition of innovation, vast natural resources, and still some of the finest universities and research centers. What has been lacking is not capability but will and vision. The derelict vessel can sail again if given a captain and crew with clarity of purpose. Strategic industries can be revived with targeted support; workforce skills can be rebuilt with training and education; new technologies (like robotics and AI) can empower rather than displace American workers if harnessed wisely. Ultimately, to navigate the 21st-century economic seas, the United States must recommit to economic statecraft — treating commerce as an integral part of grand strategy. As Clausewitz insisted about war, there must be a “continuation of policy” in economic competition too, aligning our trade, industrial, and innovation policies with our national interest. In practical terms, this means every trade agreement, every corporate merger, every supply contract should be evaluated by a simple metric: does it strengthen America’s self-reliance and long-term prosperity? If not, it deserves scrutiny if not scuttling. No more blind faith in markets; instead, enlightened steering by a republic rediscovering that economic independence is the bedrock of freedom.
Unextinguished, Essential Nature: Toward Sovereignty, Production, and Clarity
Despite the decades of drift and decline, the American spirit remains unextinguished. To truly revive, however, we must go beyond isolated efforts — we need a philosophical and cultural reawakening to our essential nature. What is the essential nature of American commerce? It is innovation wedded to production, enterprise balanced by republican virtue. It is the understanding that wealth is not mere money or consumer abundance, but the ability to create and shape one’s destiny through work, ingenuity, and prudent governance. For too long, we were sold a vision of prosperity divorced from production — an illusion that we could eternally outsource making tangible things while enriching ourselves through finance, services, and consumption. That was a mirage, alluring but empty, a labyrinth in which we lost our way. A service-only economy will do us little good in a gun fight, where our ability to actually make guns matters. Our essential nature calls us back to basics: to make, build, and grow; to value real goods and skills; to balance the dynamism of markets with the stability of communities. It is the philosophy of a sovereign people taking responsibility for their economic future, rather than subjecting it wholly to global forces or technocratic abstractions. It means resurrecting an ethos where a manufacturer, a farmer, an engineer is held in as high esteem as a banker or software developer — for all are vital to the nation’s flourishing. It also means revisiting ancient wisdom: Aristotle differentiated wealth gotten from productive arts versus wealth from exchange alone, warning that the latter, unchecked, could become sterile or destructive. We collectively ignored such wisdom at our peril. The essential nature of healthy commerce is service to life — to human need and aspiration — not the other way around.
To recalibrate strategically means to deploy a comprehensive suite of policies that reinforce each other in rebuilding American economic strength. It is not about high tariffs alone or government planning alone; it is about smart coordination of public and private efforts, guided by a clear vision of the national interest. Key pillars of this recalibration include:
• Universal Fair Trade Tariffs: Rather than ad-hoc tariffs that appear punitive or political, the U.S. can implement an across-the-board baseline tariff (e.g. 10–15%) on all imports, as a general revenue source and leverage tool. This concept of a universal tariff was even floated in recent years as a way to simplify the system and avoid singling out any one country . A universal tariff, applied uniformly, encourages domestic production and signals that the era of zero-cost access to the U.S. market is over. Notably, America’s average tariff rates would still be well below historical norms — through much of the 19th and early 20th century, U.S. tariffs averaged 20–40%. Even a 10% flat duty today would be modest in comparison, yet impactful. One projection by Goldman Sachs (assuming such a policy) foresees the effective U.S. tariff rate settling around 9% after various exclusions . This level is hardly prohibitive — it’s roughly on par with the VAT taxes that Europe routinely rebates for its exporters (a built-in advantage equivalent to a tariff). In short, a moderate universal tariff is a sane recalibration, not a radical departure, putting the U.S. roughly in line with the kinds of border adjustments many trading partners already use.
• Strategic Sector Shields: Beyond a general tariff, certain strategic industries merit extra protection or support. These include sectors vital to national security (defense, aerospace, shipbuilding), critical infrastructure (telecommunications, energy grid components), and emerging technologies (AI, quantum computing, biotech). For such sectors, the government can employ targeted tools: higher penalty tariffs on dumped or subsidized imports, domestic content requirements for government procurement (as in the recent infrastructure and CHIPS acts), and R&D subsidies/tax credits to spur innovation at home. The goal is not to coddle industries into complacency, but to give them the breathing room to invest, scale, and compete globally. We know this formula can work — consider how U.S. fracking (a technology heavily boosted by public research funds) led to an energy resurgence, or how early subsidies and procurement from the Pentagon helped create Silicon Valley. America must be unapologetic that economic security is national security. If that means insisting that, say, 5G networks use trusted U.S. or allied equipment (even if slightly pricier at first) rather than cheapest-bidder Chinese gear, so be it. The long-term payoff is a communications network free from foreign espionage or kill-switches — truly priceless when viewed through a strategic lens.
• Trade Diplomacy and Alliance Building: Liberating American commerce doesn’t equate to American unilateralism. On the contrary, the U.S. should lead a coalition of like-minded nations to reform the terms of global trade. Allies in Europe, Asia, and the Americas share many of our concerns about China’s behavior and about overly concentrated supply chains. A concert of industrial countries can set new rules.
• Domestic Renewal Investments: Finally, a recalibrated strategy must pair trade measures with robust domestic investment — in infrastructure, education, and innovation — to ensure the U.S. economy can supply what is now demanded of it. Tariffs without industrial revitalization would be a half-measure. We must modernize ports, expand advanced manufacturing training, and bring the innovation engine to more regions (so “flyover country” becomes factory country once again). The federal government’s recent moves — a $1.2 trillion infrastructure law, the CHIPS Act’s $52 billion for semiconductors, and the Inflation Reduction Act’s climate-tech subsidies — are steps in the right direction. We should endeavor to meet or exceed the domestic investment practiced by our economic competitors like China.
