Extinction Economics: The Coming Collapse of the Global Supply Chain and America’s Delusional Gamble

The Deliberate Strangulation of Trade In April alone, cargo shipments from China to the U.S. fell off a cliff—down 60%, according to Flexport. JPMorgan predicts Chinese imports will plunge by 80% before year-end. You don’t need a PhD in macroeconomics to understand what that means: American shelves are about to go dark. The reason? A regime of punitive tariffs that make the Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930 look like amateur hour. President Trump’s high-stakes tariff game has effectively shut down the world’s most critical supply route. The American consumer, long shielded by cheap foreign goods, is now exposed. Naked. Vulnerable. And priced out. This isn’t about protecting U.S. manufacturing. That ship sailed decades ago when multinational corporations shipped our factories to…