Although the U.S. President Trump has repeatedly told his counterparts and the rest of the world to “trade with the United States” and “invest in the United States,” he has so far failed to get the results he hoped for. There are several reasons for this.

First, the United States is no longer as attractive as it once was. Second, China, America’s biggest rival, stands out as a more attractive country for production and investment not only for the rest of the world but also for major U.S. companies themselves. This is because the United States simply cannot compete with China when it comes to production costs. China produces far more, at much lower cost. Moreover, it produces high-quality goods and is rapidly building global brands. For this reason, President Trump’s call on U.S. companies to dismantle their factories in China and relocate them to the United States has also failed to generate the response he expected.

Trump has repeatedly called on European entrepreneurs, investors, and business leaders to invest in the United States as well. “Build your factories in the United States. We will offer you the most favorable and lowest tax rates in the world. Otherwise, you will continue to pay high tariffs. In fact, we will raise those tariffs even further,” he said. It was virtually a threat. Yet despite this, he failed to attract the level of interest he expected from Europeans either.

It is impossible for this picture regarding the economy, trade, and tariffs not to have repercussions for politics and foreign policy. Therefore, when the United States fails to receive the response it expects to its economic invitations and trade proposals, it increasingly resorts to political pressure and foreign-policy threats. On NATO, Trump scolds his European allies. He pressures Europeans to contribute more to NATO. At times, he goes even further, virtually threatening them by saying that the United States could withdraw from NATO. Europe’s leaders, each more miserable and ignorant than the next, sit beside the U.S. president and swallow his insults. Sometimes they even applaud him.

WOULD THE UNITED STATES LEAVE NATO?

The United States will not leave NATO. Having used NATO very effectively, invested so heavily in the alliance, and gained enormous influence through NATO over its allies’ domestic and foreign policies—from their economies to their defense and security policies—the United States will not give it up. If the United States were to leave NATO, the alliance would lose its current meaning, effectiveness, and deterrent power. No NATO member could fill the vacuum left by the United States. Alongside America’s political, economic, military, industrial, and technological weight, it should also be remembered that the United States covers 14.9 percent of NATO’s common budget and accounts for 57 percent of total defense spending within the alliance.

We know that NATO’s European members have neither the strength, courage, political will, nor money to stand up to the United States in pursuit of a “more European NATO.” Nor is there any consensus among them in this regard. The idea of a European defense and security identity that is at least somewhat distinct and autonomous from NATO, occasionally championed by Germany and France, should not be taken too seriously either. Berlin and Paris have failed to persuade NATO’s other European members on this issue. Groups such as the European Political Community, which was brought to the agenda after the Ukraine-Russia war in an effort to also bring in countries such as Turkey and Britain, which are NATO members but not EU members, likewise have little function, influence, or weight.

A few years ago, President Trump demanded that NATO members raise defense spending from 2 percent to 5 percent of GDP by 2035. There was no serious objection to this demand. This alone is one indication that NATO is important to the United States not only politically and militarily but economically as well. America’s influence within NATO also benefits the U.S. arms industry, the largest in the world.

Because Trump wants to turn the United States once again into the world’s foremost manufacturing hub, increase exports, and attract more investment into the country, the defense industry is also of great importance within this broader agenda. Since lowering energy costs is essential to achieving this, Trump both sidelines environmentalist energy projects at home and, as in the case of Venezuela, abducts the leader of an energy-rich country and virtually seizes control of its energy resources. Trump knows that otherwise the United States will struggle to compete with China, and that it is impossible for America to produce more, produce more cheaply, and sell more than China, which is far ahead of the United States in global manufacturing.

That is why, as was once again evident at the NATO summit held in Turkey, discussions within NATO about strategic threats and deterrence, regional security and energy corridors, partnerships and global networks all ultimately serve U.S. priorities and interests. Whether this is explained in terms of geopolitical balances, economic interests, regional dynamics, security needs, diplomatic pressure, or all of these factors combined, NATO is an instrument of aggression and occupation serving U.S. imperialism.

A recent Peterson Institute for International Economics paper advances what it calls the “China Squeeze.” It argues that China, despite moving into more advanced industries, has not withdrawn from labor-intensive sectors. By continuing to compete in these markets, the paper claims, China is blocking poorer countries from following the traditional path to industrialization. It accuse China for climbing the development ladder and then pulling it up.

This argument misreads how industrial development and production relocation actually work. It treats China as a single, economically homogeneous country and overlooks the infrastructure, supply chains and market access that industrialization requires.

It assume that as Chinese wages rise, China should vacate traditional industries and make room for poorer economies. If it does not, it is supposedly trying to “retain comparative advantage in everything.”

But China is not composed only of Shanghai, Shenzhen and other prosperous coastal cities. It also has a vast interior, a large population and enormous regional differences in wages, land costs, industrial structures and stages of development. When manufacturing moves from Guangdong, Zhejiang or Jiangsu to Anhui, Jiangxi, Hubei or Sichuan, the economic logic is not fundamentally different from a factory moving from China to Vietnam or Indonesia. Both represent the relocation of production in response to changing costs and capabilities.

China’s internal development gap means that the entire country cannot be expected to exit an industry simultaneously. Ignoring domestic industrial relocation while focusing exclusively on production crossing national borders makes China’s continued presence in traditional manufacturing appear far more anomalous than it is.

The “China Squeeze” argument also understates the scale of China’s outward industrial relocation. A growing number of developing economies import Chinese machinery and components, process or assemble them locally, and then export finished goods to the United States, Europe and other markets. Like what McKinsey describes in its report, China’s changing role as a shift from the “factory of the world” to a “factory to the factories.” In 2025, China’s exports of consumer goods declined by about 2 percent. Its exports of intermediate goods, however, rose by 9 percent, while capital-goods exports increased by 5 percent. The fastest-growing categories included semiconductors, memory chips, lithium-ion batteries, smartphone components and industrial machinery.

In other words, China increasingly exports not only products for final consumption but also the equipment and inputs that allow manufacturing to expand elsewhere. In many emerging supply chains, China supplies machinery and components while developing economies take on assembly, processing and other stages of production.

This does not mean that there’s no competition. It means that the relationship cannot be reduced to the proposition that every additional product made in China is one fewer product made elsewhere. Developing economies can be both competitors with China and participants in production networks supported by Chinese inputs.

The deeper problem with the “China Squeeze” theory is that it ignored the fundamental elements for industrial transfer to happen. Export performance also depends on productivity, electricity supply, port efficiency, financing costs, supplier networks, industrial clusters, technology and local governance.

A factory leaving China does not means it will reappear in Bangladesh or Tanzania. Production relocation requires reliable electricity, functioning roads and ports, a basically educated workforce, effective customs administration and a reasonably predictable investment environment, These were precisely the conditions that China possessed on the eve of reform and opening-up.

Industrial clusters also generate powerful economies of scale. A garment factory needs nearby suppliers of fabric, dyes, buttons, zippers and packaging, as well as efficient logistics. An electronics plant depends on chips, screens, batteries, molds and precision components. Moving a factory to the country with the lowest wages does not necessarily produce the lowest overall costs. Wages are only one part of the equation; a functioning industrial ecosystem is often more important.

Seen from this perspective, one of the Belt and Road Initiative’s most important contributions has been to help developing economies build the conditions needed to receive industrial investment. Ports, roads, railways, power plants and communications networks are not incidental to industrialization. They are what make industrialization possible.

Industrial capacity must also be connected to consumer markets. Here, too, China is moving in a direction that the “China Squeeze” narrative overlooks. Since May 1, 2026, China has applied zero tariffs across all tariff lines to imports from all 53 African countries with which it maintains diplomatic relations.

The significance goes beyond increasing African exports of commodities and agricultural products. Combined with Chinese infrastructure, investment and industrial parks, greater access to the Chinese market could encourage more goods to be processed and manufactured in Africa before export—creating local employment, value added and productive capacity. China should now complement tariff removal with simpler customs, inspection and certification procedures so that African producers can make full use of this access.

Competition is real, but industrialization is not a zero-sum game and China is not pulling up the industrialization ladder. The “China Squeeze” thesis counts the competitive pressure created by Chinese exports while largely ignoring the opportunities created by Chinese investment, infrastructure, intermediate goods and market access.

Today, the nature of asymmetric threats is undergoing a profound transformation, with their focus shifting increasingly toward economic centers. By mid-2026, the nature of asymmetric warfare within the borders of the Russian Federation entered a qualitatively new and critical phase.

An analysis of the Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) strikes carried out in July 2026 reveals a deliberate shift in targeting. Moving beyond military installations and fuel-energy infrastructure, these attacks directly targeted civilian logistics networks and critical nodes of the macroeconomic infrastructure.

The primary objective of this strategic shift is to deplete the country’s internal resources, induce insurmountable disruptions in supply chains, and exert intense psychological pressure on the civilian population.

Large-scale, coordinated strikes on the distribution centers of Wildberries—Russia’s largest e-commerce platform and part of the RVB joint venture (formed by the 2024 merger of Wildberries and Russ)—became the symbol of this new phase of home-front vulnerability. The geographic scope of these attacks, spanning an unprecedented area from the Northwestern Federal District to Southern Russia and Crimea, exposed critical gaps in national industrial risk insurance mechanisms. Furthermore, this situation sparked severe legal disputes between platform economy giants and small businesses, compelling immediate intervention from both corporate executives and senior state officials.

Tracing the multi-layered consequences of the kinetic impacts resulting from these July attacks on the state’s digital and physical economy will shape the new architecture of civilian sector security.

The zenith of the logistical terror waged by Ukraine was recorded on the night of July 24, 2026, marking the most technically complex UAV attack inflicted on Russian Federation territory since the beginning of the year. According to data from the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, domestic air defense systems detected and destroyed 571 fixed-wing Ukrainian UAVs that night.

Two points have become exceptionally critical here: saturating radar fields and the military “swarm” effect. In short, this event is the clearest indication that the enemy has transitioned to a tactic of overwhelming radar systems. At the same time, the “swarm” effect generated across a vast geographic expanse aims to rapidly deplete the ammunition of anti-aircraft missile systems and expose air defense positions deep behind the front lines.

The breadth of the targeted geography attests to the unprecedented scale of the operation. UAVs were neutralized over the Belgorod, Bryansk, Kaluga, Kursk, Leningrad, Novgorod, Oryol, Pskov, Ryazan, Smolensk, Tver, Tula, and Vladimir regions, as well as over Moscow, Krasnodar, the Republic of Crimea, and the waters of the Azov and Black Seas.

Such a dense dispersion of targets across a vast territory points to an attempt to paralyze transportation and logistics arteries within Russia’s European landmass.

In parallel with the mass deployment of UAVs, missile strikes were also conducted against civilian industrial enterprises. During the same period, a missile attack on a local enterprise in the Fileyka district of Kirov resulted in outright catastrophe, leaving 6 people dead and 32 employees injured with varying degrees of severity.

Following the incident, Regional Governor Aleksandr Sokolov stated that the situation required not only the evacuation of the wounded, but also large-scale interventions such as restoring water and power supplies and auditing the security of neighboring settlements. This combined approach—employing inexpensive kamikaze drones to degrade air defenses followed immediately by missile strikes on unprotected industrial zones—presents an entirely new threat paradigm for the civilian economy.

Systematic and sequential attacks directed at the facilities of a single commercial entity completely eliminate the possibility of coincidence. The strategic, macroeconomic, and psychological factors turning civilian commercial warehouses into critical vulnerabilities for an entire state rest upon four pillars:

1. Role as the central circulatory system of domestic trade: Wildberries plays a critical role in the architecture of the modern Russian economy, connecting millions of consumers with tens of thousands of SMEs. Damage to distribution centers severe supply chains, triggering localized shortages of essential consumer goods and regional inflationary spikes. The primary goal is to destabilize the domestic market and create an artificial supply vacuum.
2. Immense facility footprints and defense complexity: Spanning hundreds of thousands of square meters across the nation, these hangars constitute massive targets with high radar contrast. Unlike military bases, these commercial warehouses cannot possess their own air defense systems; placing every such facility under an air defense umbrella is physically impossible without compromising frontline systems.
3. Social and psychological impact: In the eyes of the public, logistics centers symbolize daily economic stability. Black plumes of smoke visible from miles away, massive fires, and civilian casualties represent a hybrid terror tactic designed to transport an atmosphere of fear deep into peaceful cities and shake the internal socio-political climate.
4. Magnified radius of economic impact: Inventory consumed by flames in these warehouses generally consists of stock purchased by merchants on credit. The destruction of commodity inventories holds the potential to cause mass vendor bankruptcies, bank loan defaults, and cascading layoffs across small businesses.

The events of July 2026 mark an irreversible shift in the threat landscape facing Russian commerce and macroeconomics. Attacks directed at Wildberries hubs in regions such as St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Tambov exposed the utter vulnerability of civilian logistics infrastructure.

Deploying relatively inexpensive unmanned aerial vehicles, the enemy is capable of inflicting tens of billions of rubles in direct damage, paralyzing the supply of essential goods, and triggering an acute social crisis in which hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs face the threat of bankruptcy. According to Russian experts, the total cost of a single fire—similar to the Kotovsk incident on July 18—can range between 50 and 100 billion Rubles ($630 million – $1.2 billion USD).

Despite its massive capital reserves, corporate business was caught unprepared for military threats. The medium-term survival of the e-commerce economy depends on the state and the private sector uniting to engineer unprecedented systemic solutions. Establishing compensation funds and introducing mandatory risk-distribution mechanisms are critical steps that must be taken.

Logistics hubs will remain open targets unless a “state program for subsidized reinsurance of military risks” is established for the critical nodes of the civilian economy. In the future, it will not suffice for large enterprises merely to pour capital into the physical protection of infrastructure; they must also deeply decentralize their logistics networks to prevent the concentration of goods and capital at single points of failure.