Trump’s “Liberation Day” has turned the economist Stephen Miran’s once-esoteric vision — forged in his 2024 User’s Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System — into a policy blueprint. Now Trump’s top economic architect, Miran’s ideas underpin the so-called “Mar-a-Lago Accord”: a bold rewiring of global trade and money around raw U.S. self-interest, backed by military and financial muscle. It’s ambitious and coherent — but risky.
Miran argues that the U.S., as the world’s reserve currency issuer, must run deficits to meet global dollar demand. He argues that the “Triffin dilemma” is no longer abstract: its persistent trade and fiscal deficits to supply the world with safe dollar assets have helped deindustrialise its economy and destabilise its politics. The dollar is too strong, manufacturing is too weak and foreigners (especially allies) are free-riding on America’s defence umbrella whilst extracting rents from the U.S. consumer and bond markets.
Miran’s fix flips this dynamic: high tariffs to boost U.S. firms, currency interventions and debt restructuring for a weaker dollar and transactional security guarantees: only nations accepting these terms stay under America’s defense umbrella. Allies must accept lower Treasury returns, ditch export surpluses and pay for protection, or, as Miran puts it, be “left out in the cold”.
Trump has not used Miran’s terminology, but his rhetoric and actions are now plainly animated by this vision. Liberation Day — the policy slogan unveiled earlier this year — promises to liberate the U.S. from economic “entanglement” by reviving domestic industry, taxing imports and wielding tariffs as a tool of both financial and national security. Trump’s advisors are pushing for a tiered tariff structure linked to countries’ currency policies, defence spending and trade openness. The aim is to erect a new framework that hardwires asymmetry into the international system, favourable to the U.S. and enforced through leverage rather than mutual gain.
The more coercive Washington becomes, the more it invites hedging behaviour from others
The plan is internally consistent. It recognises the changing global balance of power, the distributional costs of liberal globalisation and the overextension of U.S. obligations. But it is a cure for the US’s liberal hegemony that suffers from three potential fatal strategic problems.
First, it misreads dollar dominance. Miran bets foreign demand for Treasuries is inelastic, so the U.S. can slash payments to overseas holders without sparking a sell-off. That’s a gamble. The dollar’s role as the world’s reserve asset is built not on coercion but trust: in U.S. institutions, the rule of law and the relative neutrality of its financial system. Weaponising Treasuries would undermine that trust. Far from solving the Triffin dilemma, it could hasten a global search for alternatives to dollar assets — especially if the U.S. begins to discriminate between domestic and foreign holders. Markets do not forgive breaches of financial norms, even by superpowers.
Second, it blurs allies and enemies. Making access to the U.S. market and security guarantees contingent on economic subordination invites balancing rather than compliance. Already weary of American volatility, European states may respond by accelerating defence cooperation and investing in strategic industries outside U.S. control. China, meanwhile, stands to benefit. As America turns inward and transactional, Beijing can become a more reliable economic partner through the Belt and Road Initiative, yuan swap lines or favourable investment terms. The more coercive Washington becomes, the more it invites hedging behaviour from others. It will take time, but it is more than possible that Trump’s liberation day will help “Make Europe Great Again” through reindustrialisation and finally forcing through serious geopolitical thinking rather than naive forms of postmodern politics. Of course, it remains to be seen whether Europe chooses the right economic policies to make this a reality. Still, existential crises have ways of focusing minds, no matter how muddled.
Third, it discards the most underappreciated instrument of American power: the ability to structure the domestic and international preferences of other states. The liberal order, far from being a burdensome act of generosity, was a strategic architecture that locked in U.S. primacy. The U.S. pacified potential peer competitors through security alliances, trade institutions and rules-based frameworks, ensuring that allies’ policies were compatible with American interests. It was, in short, a hegemonic bargain that reinforced itself. In abandoning that model for one based on transactional arm-twisting, Trump is not just shifting costs — he is potentially foregoing the tools that made American hegemony durable in the first place. Hegemony always works best when the iron fist is clothed in a velvet glove; expose the hand and many may choose other rings to kiss.
The tragedy of the Mar-a-Lago Accord is that it sees only the price of American leadership, not its returns. Yes, it entails costs. But it also offers the immense strategic advantage of shaping the world, rather than merely reacting to it — a form of what Susan Strange called “structural power”. A hegemon that turns its back on this role does not simply reduce its burdens. It invites a future shaped by others.
