Staff Reports
When the administration rolled out its sweeping reciprocal tariffs, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent didn’t mince words — he publicly warned other capitals not to reflexively retaliate and to “sit back” while the United States tested its leverage. That blunt posture wasn’t a sign of weakness; it was cold, clear strategy: let the world feel the consequences of its long-standing, lopsided trade behavior and see who blinks first.
Bessent’s message echoed a basic truth conservatives have championed for years — the United States is the market everyone wants access to, and American policymakers finally turned that reality into negotiating power. Administration officials argued that surplus countries are the ones who actually stand to lose in an escalation, and that restraint by partners would preserve room for real deals that favor American industry and workers.
These moves did not come out of thin air; the so‑called Liberation Day tariffs established a new baseline and a framework for reciprocal levies designed to rebalance decades of trade abuse. The policy has drawn legal challenges and fierce international pushback, but it also forced conversations that every free‑market, yet fair‑trade, conservative has long demanded — that open markets must be reciprocal, not one‑way streets.
Even reliable trading partners like Singapore found themselves rethinking business as usual, telling U.S. officials they can “live with” a baseline levy while pursuing sectoral talks to protect key industries. That kind of pragmatic response shows the point: nations value access to American consumers, and Washington used that fact to extract concessions and attention, not apologies.
Washington’s legal and economic battles will play out, and critics in finance and the media howl about market turbulence — as if defending our manufacturing backbone and national security were a sin. Treasury filings and administration briefs have already signaled urgent reasons for speed and leverage in negotiations, and Americans should expect hard bargaining rather than groveling compromises.
This is the kind of unapologetic American statecraft conservatives applaud: using our unmatched market as leverage, forcing fairer terms, and refusing to be taken for granted. The road will be bumpy and the headlines noisy, but recalibrating decades of one‑sided trade was always going to require bold action — and for once, Washington is acting like the country it needs to be.
