🚨Are tariffs just the first step for a new financial system?

"In the next few years, we will see a major economic restructuring. Something equivalent to a new Bretton Woods system. There's a very high chance that will happen in the next 4 years, and I want to be a part of that process."
- Finance Minister Bessent speaks in June 2024 (nửa the year before the election and is not yet in a ministerial seat trưởng)

Recall why Bretton Woods was born, when the United States had just come out of WW2 and held most of the world's gold reserves. The currencies of the member countries are pegged to the USD, and the USD is backed by gold. The IMF and World Bank were born.
→ This started the process of the USD becoming the global reserve currency.

Bessent is an advocate of using tariffs as a negotiating tool, he is the man behind the US tariff plans.

Bessent is looking to create a new version of Bretton Woods (sau its previous 2 versions, the gold and petrodollar) standard, shaping a new global economic power based on tariffs?

Currently tariffs are used by Trump as:
- Budget revenues (dù not worth kể)
- Geopolitical weapons to foreign pressure
- Negotiation leverage in FTA and supply chain agreements + trade balance regulation
- Forcing companies to move production from off-shore to the United States or friendly countries and near the South American axis, Mexico (near-shoring)

For now, tariffs are just the first step to put countries in a position to choose sides, after countries accept (hoặc không) conditions to join a new playing field, an agreement will be signed - as the Plaza Accord was. Along with that is restructuring the domestic economy through reducing the pressure on public debt (kéo bonds yield and putting pressure on FED).