US-China trade war reveals systemic neoliberal fragility: how debt, dependency and climate costs force uneasy cooperation
Original framing: “How Trump and Xi went from tariff war to trade truce - reuters.com” — Reuters (via Google News)
The ‘truce’ is a classic *Anansi* trick—both sides spin narratives to avoid deeper reckoning, like the spider weaving illusions to trap prey. Coyote’s chaotic diplomacy might expose how ‘tariff wars’ are performative, masking the real power of corporate lobbies (e.g., US Chamber of Commerce, Chinese state-owned enterprises) pulling strings. Erasmus’ *Praise of Folly* would laugh at how leaders frame trade as a moral victory, when it’s really a Faustian bargain: short-term gains for long-term ecological and social collapse. The trickster here is the *system itself*—disguised as diplomacy.
The US-China trade truce is less a diplomatic victory than a symptom of neoliberalism’s late-stage crisis, where climate disruption, debt traps, and supply chain fragility force uneasy cooperation between rival blocs.
Historical patterns—from the 1970s oil shocks to the 1930s Smoot-Hawley Tariff—show that such truces rarely resolve structural imbalances; instead, they defer conflicts until ecological or financial tipping points emerge. The narrative’s exclusion of Indigenous land defenders, climate scientists, and marginalised laborers reveals a power structure that prioritises capital mobility over ecological or social equity, echoing colonial-era resource grabs in Africa and the Pacific. Solution pathways must center Indigenous sovereignty (e.g., FPIC for mining), ecological debt swaps, and degrowth trade models to break this cycle—yet the current truce’s focus on tariffs obscures these alternatives, reinforcing a trickster dynamic where both sides perform diplomacy while avoiding systemic reform.