Worldwide trade war places human nature’s get-focused competitive spirit fully on display. After President Donald Trump announced a sweeping set of retaliatory tariffs on nearly 100 nations, he emphasized that the United States has “been treated so badly by other countries because we had stupid leadership that allowed this to happen. They took our businesses; they took our money; they took our jobs.”

Other countries do not see it this way. They don’t care how badly the U.S. has been treated. They care only about their own national economies. Since President Trump’s tariffs hurt their economies, they see Trump’s America as an enemy. Ontario Premier Doug Ford told reporters that Canada will “inflict as much pain as possible on the American people” in response to President Trump’s tariffs.

Statements like this reveal a competitive spirit that isn’t focused on helping but on hurting. President Trump isn’t trying to hurt Canada’s standard of living: He is trying to save American jobs. But leaders like Ford are spitefully hurting their own people in an attempt to get revenge on America. Bible prophecy reveals this spiteful, anti-American attitude will become more common.

The Trump administration is enacting tariffs to salvage the nation’s long-term economic survival, hoping to bring manufacturing home and motivate other nations to lower tariffs on American goods. To a certain extent, this plan is working. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said about 70 nations have indicated they want to negotiate new trade deals that will favor the U.S. more than the current ones. But some of the most powerful economies in the world have not reached out. Rather than reduce tariffs all around, they want to increase them and “inflict as much pain as possible on the American people.”

Turbulence in the bond market has already prompted President Trump to enact a 90-day pause on all reciprocal tariffs except those on China. So perhaps some deals may be worked out. If the world adopted God’s give way of life, President Trump could certainly sit down with world leaders and negotiate deals that are fair to everybody. But the world has not adopted the give way. Instead, it has adopted Satan’s get-focused competitive spirit. This means trade war with China and its allies is certainly coming.

Moses warned that if the Israelites rebelled against God’s laws, God would punish them. “The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flieth; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand …. And he shall besiege thee in all thy gates, until thy high and fenced walls come down, wherein thou trustedst, throughout all thy land: and he shall besiege thee in all thy gates throughout all thy land, which the Lord thy God hath given thee” (Deuteronomy 28:49, 52).

For many decades, the late Herbert W. Armstrong said the siege in these verses was a symbol of Israel’s end-time descendants, chiefly the U.S., suffering an economic battering by foreign nations.

“We allowed ourselves to be transformed from a cast iron economy that made things into a largely paper economy that depends on the good graces of foreign nations for its survival,” wrote Sean Davis for the Federalist. “This is a recipe for civilizational suicide. We don’t make our own weapons, food, machines, vehicles, plastics, medicines or computers. The whole covid insanity, with its shutdowns and shortages and supply-chain chaos, was a blaring alarm warning us that the economy we thought was so strong was shockingly fragile. … The reality is we cannot survive if we continue to remain addicted to cheap foreign [goods]. We cannot survive if we are unable to make our own food and medicine and vehicles and weapons and computers.”

President Trump may try his best to protect America from foreign battering, but Moses’s prophecy still stands. If America does not turn back to God, economic conflict will escalate into trade war. And if that does not get America’s attention, trade war will escalate into nuclear war—and foreign enslavement.

My father, Philadelphia Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry, writes in his book Ezekiel—the End-Time Prophet that Ezekiel 4:4-5 is a prophecy of a 390-day economic siege against the end-time nations of Israel. Isaiah 23 describes the power bloc besieging America as a “mart of nations.” China, Japan and the European Union will be the main aggressors, and the result will be not just more expensive goods but societal breakdown and violence resulting in one third of the people inside the U.S. dying!

The U.S. has a $28 trillion economy, yet the combined gross domestic product of China, Japan and the EU is $41 trillion. Facing an economic siege and other means of aggression and attack, the U.S., despite its economy, geography, military and other advantages, will fall without divine protection! Other nations covet America’s advantages and will go to war to get them if Trump does not share with them freely.

President Trump’s Liberation Day plan may make America more self-sufficient, but it is also uniting much of the world against America. This makes it all important for America to seek protection—not from its wealth or troops or president, but from its God!

Request your free copy of The United States and Britain in Prophecy, by Herbert W. Armstrong.