Someday an updated edition of The Art of the Deal may be placed on the bookshelf next to Halford Mackinder’s Democratic Ideals and Reality, Nicholas Spykman’s America’s Strategy in World Politics, and Alfred Thayer Mahan’s The Problem of Asia given the events of the last few days. President Donald Trump has placed geoeconomics in the service of geopolitics to advance U.S. interests in the Western Hemisphere. He has used the economic sword of tariffs to achieve diplomatic and geopolitical results in record time, as Panama, Mexico, and Canada have all promised to pursue Trump’s geopolitical agendas in the hemisphere. Somewhere in heaven, John Quincy Adams is smiling. Trump’s hemispheric agenda includes fairer trade with our neighbors, a crackdown on fentanyl and other deadly drugs from coming into the United States, control of the U.S. northern and southern borders, and lessening and then eliminating China’s influence in the Western Hemisphere. It has rightly been called the “Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.” Geoeconomics in Service to Geopolitics Trump sent Secretary of State Marco Rubio to Panama, where he told Panama’s leaders in no uncertain terms that China’s current involvement at both ends of the Panama Canal is unacceptable and wouldn’t be tolerated by the Trump administration. Rubio noted that China’s presence in and around the Canal Zone is both an economic and national security concern for the United States. (RELATED: China Poses a Severe Threat in Panama and Leaves the US With No Choice.) Meanwhile, Trump was telling journalists that he intended to take back control of the Canal Zone by unilaterally terminating the 1978 treaties signed by President Carter and confirmed by the U.S. Senate that gave control of the Canal to Panama. (RELATED: The Panama Canal and the Firing Line Debate) Shortly after meeting with Secretary Rubio, Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino announced that Panama would not be renewing its agreement with China that it entered into eight years ago under the auspices of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Panama’s leader stated that he would welcome U.S. investment in infrastructure programs to replace China’s BRI. Geoeconomics in the service of geopolitics. (RELATED: To Secure the Panama Canal, Reinstitute the Monroe Doctrine) Next, Trump announced and then issued an order imposing 25 percent tariffs against Mexico and Canada, explaining that neither country has engaged in fair trade with the U.S. and both countries have failed to stem the tide of illegal drugs and immigrants into the United States. After making boastful noises about imposing their own tariffs on U.S. goods, the president of Mexico and the prime minister of Canada made deals with Trump to delay the tariffs for 30 days in return for their taking concrete steps to meet Trump’s demands. Mexico’s president promised to deploy 10,000 National Guard soldiers to that country’s border with the United States, while Canada’s leader announced that he would deploy personnel and new technology to the border and appoint a “fentanyl czar” to oversee tough measures against shipments of fentanyl across the border into the U.S. Again, geoeconomics in the service of geopolitics. Trump has already signaled an intention/desire to purchase Greenland from Denmark and to make Canada the 51st state. Greenland and Canada both occupy key geographical positions in the scramble for preeminence in the Arctic Ocean. Trump’s gambit here may be to “settle” for increased basing rights in Greenland and greater cooperation with Canada to offset Sino-Russian designs in the Arctic, though there is a better chance of Greenland being acquired by the U.S. than Canada becoming the 51st state. (RELATED: What if Greenland Isn’t Denmark’s to Sell?) There was a brief time after the end of the Cold War when strategic prognosticators like Thomas Friedman and Edward Luttwak claimed that geoeconomics had replaced geopolitics as the fulcrum of global politics. But geopolitics never went away. The great power competition of the 21st century revived it. Geoeconomics is a subset of geopolitics — Trump’s latest moves on the global chessboard show that he understands that. READ MORE from Francis P. Sempa: To Secure the Panama Canal, Reinstitute the Monroe Doctrine Elise Stefanik Should Model Her Tenure at the UN on Reagan Patriot Jeane Kirkpatrick Churchill Bust Returns to the Oval Office The post Tariffs: Geoeconomics in the Service of Geopolitics appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.