Amelia Lester

United States China Although tariffs haven’t been in vogue since the 19th century, Donald Trump has seen them as a solution for what he perceives to be an unfair global trading system since at least the 1980s. In 2025, Trump, now U.S. president, turned to import duties as a cure-all. But in many ways, the cure turned out to be worse than the disease. As a result of the uncertainty and chaos Trump’s tariffs engendered, the U.S. economy shrank in the first quarter of this year.

United States China This year might be remembered as the one in which critical minerals took center stage. Of the 50 or so raw materials that comprise the building blocks of the U.S. defense and energy sectors, U.S. President Donald Trump has yet to come across one that he doesn’t like. In fact, as Foreign Policy’s Christina Lu observed, critical minerals are the “through line” of Trump’s second term, and access to them has shaped his geographic fixations and alliances.