Asymmetric warfare is war between belligerents whose relative military power differs greatly, or who employ drastically different strategy or tactics. It is typically a war between a standing, professional army and an insurgency or resistance movement.  Guerrilla warfare and terrorism are two examples.  Our armed forces will not be defeated by the Taliban.  But, on the other hand, we have not been able to drive them from the field in Afghanistan.  I’m wondering if we are entering an era of asymmetric economic warfare.    Are we vulnerable to economic wars that we won’t lose but can’t decisively win?

It appears that our President can impose tariffs (import taxes) at will.  For example, he has imposed a tariff on imported steel which he says will increase jobs at American steel companies.  In response, China will tax imports of American pork, likely decreasing American agricultural jobs.  Tariffs can be on imports of a particular product, like steel, from any nation or they can be targeted to imports from only one nation.

On the local scale, it makes sense to protect jobs.  On the world scale tariffs cause everyone to pay higher prices while governments collect the taxes.  Behind the scenes businesses and labor organizations try to influence their governments to protect personal interests by taxing anything and everything from cheese to car parts.  We also pay an invisible cost – to fund the world-wide bureaucracies that regulate trade and tariffs.

None of this is new.  Over the course of the past 300 or so years (and especially after WWII) nations have crafted international rules for trade along with special regional trade relationships.  We have treaties, agreements and semi-formal traditions that form the rules of economic competition.  They are comparable to the rules of warfare in the sense that they apply until someone decides to violate them.

We’ve moved along for decades, occasionally grinning and occasionally griping about the trade deals negotiated by our governments.  Then along came President Trump – highlighting the complaints of various American interests and rarely mentioning any benefits that we’ve received.  Is he right that our trade representatives have negotiated away too much?  Are other nations, including our traditional friends, intentionally abusing us?  I don’t know the answer.

What I do know is that President Trump has ignored unofficial rules and standards of behavior.  Rather than long, drawn out negotiations that often lead to no changes at all, he makes and implements his own decisions with little regard for the interests and ideas of other nations, or for unintended consequences.  Even our strongest friends don’t like it.  Some have threatened taxes and tariffs of their own; and some of those are already going into effect. It is, perhaps, the beginning of a “trade war” that the President said will be easy to win.

If other nations abide by traditions and rules but we don’t, then it probably would be easy to win.  But what happens if even small nations and corporations decide to violate international economic rules at our expense?  The rules that they decide to violate may not be the same ones that we break.  What happens when following the traditions of good behavior becomes voluntary?  It appears to me that the US and other developed nations are particularly vulnerable to asymmetric economic warfare, just as we are vulnerable to asymmetric military warfare.

Our nation’s wealth of intellectual property is at severe risk.  Any small but technologically capable nation could partner with a pharmaceutical manufacturer to make and sell drugs that are still under American patent.  The value of the American corporation’s research, development and patent would drop to zero.  The same is true for the intellectual property and patents of Apple, Google, and all the other tech giants.  That kind of asymmetric economic warfare could create financial chaos around the world while benefiting those who violate the rules and traditions.

Is this far-fetched?  Maybe.  So were the 9-11 attack and the asymmetrical warfare that still follows it 17 years later.  If we violate traditions and expectations for “America First” purposes we don’t know what others might do or how widely the practice might spread.  Because we have the most highly developed economy, we also have the most to lose if world economic order erodes.  We might be wise to behave conservatively in case others choose to follow our example.