The Last Tariff: China Ended the US’s Trade War With a Whisper | Gerry Nolan

It happened with no fanfare. No saber-rattling. No choreographed press conference. Just one quiet statement from Beijing’s Customs Tariff Commission: "Tariffs on US goods will rise to 125% — and this will be our final adjustment. Regardless of future US actions, China will no longer respond." In Washington, they saw a concession. In reality? Beijing walked away from the last imperial leverage DC had left.

 » Tariffs on US goods will rise to 125% — and this will be our final adjustment.
Regardless of future US actions, China will no longer respond. «
China's Customs Tariff Commission, April 11, 2025.

In Trump's chaotic circus, tariffs are sold as economic patriotism, blunt-force trauma marketed as “tough negotiation.” But tariffs are the last resort of a hollowed-out empire that no longer produces, competes, or innovates, only thinks it can still dictate.

Trump’s latest move, slapping a 125% tariff on Chinese goods, was meant to flex dominance. Beijing waited, matched it perfectly, then froze the board. "There is no possibility of market acceptance of US goods in China." Translation: “We don’t need you anymore.” No further hikes are necessary. The US is de facto cut off from the colossal Chinese market. That's not de-escalation. That's de-dollarization in practice. Geoeconomic Aikido, using the empire’s aggression to accelerate the break from it.

» China never bluffs—and we see through those who do. « 

Chinese Embassy in the US, April 10, 2025.

Washington still believes in a world that no longer exists. It thinks it can dictate trade terms while running trillion-dollar deficits, threaten its way into solvency while its factories rust, and that China will forever tolerate economic warfare just to retain access to Walmart shelves and US Treasury bonds, bonds that are a ticking time bomb for the hollowed empire.

But that world is gone. China has reoriented trade through Belt & Road. It’s fortified currency alliances with BRICS+, hardened internal markets, and invested across the Global South. Most importantly, it has shifted away from Western export dependency.

» Even if the US imposes even higher tariffs, it would no longer make economic 

sense and ultimately go down as a joke in world economic history. « 

Chinese Embassy in the US, April 11, 2025.

So when Beijing says, “we will ignore further US tariff moves,” it’s not a concession. It's sovereignty. The US has already been priced out, there’s no need for more theaters. This is the reckoning of a rentier empire built on financial parasitism, not production.

The definition of narcissism.

America doesn't have the tools to win a trade war, it doesn't make the tools anymore. Wall Street eviscerated its industrial base. Labor was deskilled by decades of outsourcing. Infrastructure crumbled while $10 trillion burned in forever wars. Trump’s 125% tariff isn’t policy, it’s a symptom. An empire in late stage declined. The power of Beijing’s response isn’t the tariff, it’s the refusal to respond again. No escalation. No panic. Just a clean break from a failing system.

A message to the Global South: “We won’t be dragged into Washington’s chaos. We won’t fight over a burning house. We’ll build new ones.” It's multipolar maturity. Let the US isolate itself, tariff its own supply chains, and raise rates until its middle class fractures. Beijing will trade in yuan with the Global Majority, while America tariffs itself into irrelevance.

 » The reckoning of a rentier empire built on financial parasitism, not production. « 

Markets have lost nearly $6 trillion net since February, despite brief rebounds. Wall Street knows: this isn’t 2001. China isn’t cowering. It now holds the keys to rare earths, battery tech, and semiconductors. Trump framed the tariffs as punishment for “ripping off the USA.” 

 

But who really gutted America’s industries? China? Or Goldman Sachs? Who looted pensions, turned homes into hedge fund fodder, and spent trillions on wars that only enriched Raytheon and BlackRock? The real theft wasn’t done in Beijing. It was done in boardrooms, think tanks, and Senate halls under the banner of “free markets” and “security.”

 » There is no possibility of market acceptance of US goods in China. «

The US is de facto cut off from the colossal Chinese market.

This moment isn’t the climax of a trade war. It’s the end of illusion, that the US can sanction, tariff, and bully its way to eternal dominance. Beijing just called time. 125% is the ceiling. From here forward, they won’t play the empire’s game. They're building a new one, with bricks, not bombs. With real trade, not tribute. With allies who don’t need threats to stay loyal.

Quoted from:
Gerry Nolan (April 12, 2025) - The Last Tariff: How China Ended the Empire’s Trade War With a Whisper.

 

 

Trump economic counselor Peter Navarro accuses China of killing "1 million Americans with fentanyl" and "destroying over 60,000 American factories and 5 million manufacturing jobs". Who prescribes opioids to millions of Americans, leading to addiction? Did China choose to ship these factories offshore and deindustrialize for tax evasion and cheap labor?

See also:

 Lu QiYuan (March 15, 2025) - The US Will Now Cannibalize Its Own Allies and Vassals to Survive.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China (February 20, 2023) - US Hegemony and Its Perils.

And, of course, no one understands tariffs—only Trump does.

When Not To Put Money In The Bank - Negative Interest Rates in Europe

econfix (Jan 4, 2016) - It seems that in Europe negative interest rates are common place. Below are the current rates of some central banks:
 

European Central Bank -0.3%
Swiss National Bank -0.75%;
Danish Central bank -0.75%
Swedish Central Bank -1.1%

Why are they in negative territory? For all these countries it is the exchange rate against the Euro that is important. Negative interest rates weaken a country’s currency and make imports more expensive and exports cheaper. Furthermore central banks could be trying to prevent a slide into deflation, or a spiral of falling prices that could derail the recovery.

In theory, interest rates below zero should reduce borrowing costs for companies and households, driving demand for loans. In practice, there’s a risk that the policy might do more harm than good. If banks make more customers pay to hold their money, cash may go under the mattress instead. Janet Yellen, the U.S. Federal Reserve chair, said at her confirmation hearing in November 2013 that even a deposit rate that’s positive but close to zero could disrupt the money markets that help fund financial institutions. Two years later, she said that a change in economic circumstances could put negative rates “on the table” in the U.S., and Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said he could now cut the benchmark rate below the current 0.5 percent if necessary. Deutsche Bank economists note that negative rates haven’t sparked the bank runs or cash hoarding some had feared, in part because banks haven’t passed them on to their customers. But there’s still a worry that when banks absorb the cost themselves, it squeezes the profit margin between their lending and deposit rates, and might make them even less willing to lend. Ever-lower rates also fuel concern that countries are engaged in a currency war of competitive devaluations. Source: Bloomberg