Will President Trump’s tariffs on various countries stoke nationalism around the world? Some might even be prepared to say that this is Trump’s intention in a grand 4D chess move to break the power of the globalist clown world elites. But whether or not it is intended, it appears to be having that effect:

“Prime Minister Modi has called on Indians to buy more domestically-made products

US President Donald Trump’s 50% tariffs on most imports from India came into effect on Wednesday.

The US first imposed 25% tariffs on the country in early August, as New Delhi and Washington could not arrive at a trade agreement. Trump then announced an additional 25% on India effective August 27 for New Delhi’s continued purchases of Russian oil…

…“Economic selfishness is on the rise globally and we must not sit and cry about our difficulties, we must rise above and not allow others to hold us in their clutches,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Tuesday

He called for increased self-reliance within the South Asian country. “All of us should follow the mantra of buying only ‘Made in India’ goods,” Modi said, while also encouraging shopkeepers to prominently display signs promoting Indian goods.

He acknowledged that India may face increased pressure from the tariffs, but stated that the country is willing to endure it.”

Modi is doing the right thing here. Firstly, India is a rising economic power, and it will increasingly become a lucrative market for foreign nations to seek to invest and sell in. So, breaking from reliance on selling to the US will have a long-term positive effect for India. Secondly, being self-reliant is the proper response to tariffs. These tariffs are coming in part as a result of secondary sanctions being done by the US against Russia. But the proper response by an economy is to wean itself from reliance on foreign goods and foreign labour. This will ensure that their economy is less vulnerable to foreign interference by things like sanctions and tariffs.

The sanctions war on Russia has had precisely this effect. Russia’s economy has grown markedly even in the face of sanctions, and indeed in large part because of them:

“Russia’s budget revenue surged to a record high in December, even as the United States imposed fresh sanctions targeting Moscow’s banking sector in an effort to disrupt foreign trade payments and reduce export proceeds.

The Finance Ministry reported total revenue of more than 4 trillion rubles ($40 billion) last month, a 28 per cent increase compared to the same period in the previous year.

According to Bloomberg calculations based on government data, it was the highest monthly revenue recorded since January 2011.

The spike in revenue came despite Western sanctions designed to choke off funding for Russia’s war in Ukraine. US and allied measures have focused on restricting revenues from the country’s energy sector and the banks supporting it.

However, income from oil and gas soared by 33 per cent in December from a year earlier and rose by 26 per cent for the full year of 2024, bolstered by taxes, dividends, and economic growth.”

That does not mean there are no issues in the Russian economy. Their economy has boomed in large part because of government spending on defense, making it currently very defense spending reliant. However, this is not the negative thing that many people have sought to make it out to be. Simply because the goal of these sanctions was not to make Russia’s economic boom dependent on their military spending, but rather to crush their economy and bring them to heel and it has not had this effect at all. Quite the opposite in fact.

This is what focusing on self-reliance can do for a nation. It allows it to resist being crushed by things like sanctions and tariffs and allows their population to be productive in the face of international efforts to sabotage your economy.

This is why Trump is also doing the right thing by his own country by instituting tariffs on countries that have been taking advantage of US markets for years. American workers have been getting poorer because of off shoring and this needs to stop. What is worse is that this has national security implications as well, because a nation that cannot make what it needs is vulnerable to foreign powers in war. Hence, Trump’s effort to make the US economy more reliant is a wise move.

Contrast this with Australia. Australia’s economy is heavily dependent on importing foreign workers and trading with foreign nations for things we need instead of making them here. Indeed, Australia makes far less than it used to, because of the Lima agreement, and often we send our resources overseas to be sold back to us as building products and other products.

We are in a highly vulnerable position when it comes to sanctions and tariffs because of this dependence on foreign trade, even though we are every bit as resource rich as Russia and have a highly advanced and educated population. If China wanted to they could easily bring our economy to heel, as the United States has done with many nations over the decades, simply with economic measures. Our nation is highly dependent and therefore highly vulnerable.

The upshot of all this, though, is that things are changing. The polarization of the world into a multipolarity of regional powers is causing nations to pullback from reliance on other nations. Some of this is pre-emptive, like it was in Russia which prepared for such sanctions for over a decade, and some of it is by necessity like in India’s case which is reading the changing of the wind and adjusting how it does things. But all of this is causing nations to wake up to their sovereignty again, and this is a positive thing.

I don’t know if is President Trump’s intention to stoke nationalism across the world. I believe he genuinely wants to keep the US at the top of the military and economic pile for as long as possible, without using war as much as some of his opponents in the US would like him to. However, whether it is intentional or not, his policies are increasing nationalism across the globe.

As Modi says, “Economic selfishness is on the rise globally and we must not sit and cry about our difficulties, we must rise above and not allow others to hold us in their clutches,…” What Modi calls “economic selfishness” should more accurately be called economic national self-interest. Nations have an interest in making sure their economy serves their own people, not foreign nations. Resource rich nations have an advantage in this area.

Now, if we could just get a 50% tariff on foreign workers being imported into our country to stop them competing with Australian workers, things could really begin to be looking up.