“Liberation Day” is an apt name for President Donald Trump’s policy to impose massive new tariffs across the world. He sees the United States as a victimized colony, taken advantage of by other countries that have robbed it of jobs, industries and money. “Our country and its taxpayers have been ripped off for more than 50 years,” he said when announcing his plans on Wednesday. Trump’s acolytes, such as Vice President JD Vance and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, parrot this view, painting a picture of a hollowed-out country with empty factories, unemployed workers and stagnant wages.

The reality is the opposite. And it is only because it is the opposite — in other words, because of America’s unrivaled economic power — that Trump can even attempt his tariff policy. It is U.S. economic heft that allows him to try to force the rest of the world to bend to his will. But Trump is using American power in such a capricious, destructive and dumb way that it will certainly result in a lose-lose outcome for everyone.

The real economic story of the past three decades is that the United States has surged ahead of all its major competitors. In 2008, the U.S. economy was about the same size as the euro zone’s; now, it is nearly twice the size. In 1990, average U.S. wages were about 20% greater than the overall average in the advanced industrial world; they are now about 40% higher. In 1995, a Japanese person was 50% richer than an American in terms of GDP per capita; today, an American is about 150% richer than a Japanese person. In fact, the poorest American state, Mississippi, has a higher per capita GDP than Britain, France or Japan. And yet Trump has been convinced that through all these decades, America is actually in steep decline. His worldview seems to have been set in the 1960s, when, in his memory, America was a great manufacturing power.

The reality of America as the dominant nation in the fastest-growing and most critical spheres of the global economy today — technology and services — seems to mean nothing to him. His tariffs have been calculated using a method closer to voodoo than economics. Among many mistakes, they are based solely on U.S. trade deficits with countries in goods. That the United States runs huge surpluses in services — exporting software, software services, movies, music, law and banking to the world — somehow doesn’t count. More than 75% of the U.S. economy is apparently intangible fluff; steel is the real deal.

But while America is the world’s dominant power, it is not so strong that it can act this irrationally. The world economy has grown to a size and scale that it will find ways around American protectionism, which is now among the world’s most egregious. Contrary to Trump’s stubborn beliefs, the United States was in fact already somewhat protectionist, with tariff and nontariff trade barriers greater than in 68 other countries. With these new tariffs, American protectionism is off the charts, with higher rates than the Smoot-Hawley ones of 1930 that exacerbated the Great Depression. In the short run, everyone will suffer. But in the medium to long run, countries will start trading around the United States.

This movement has already begun. Since Trump first took office in 2017, the United States has abandoned virtually all efforts to expand trade. But other countries have picked up the slack. The European Union has signed eight new trade deals, and China has signed nine. Countries around the world need growth, and that means trade. China will be the big winner in this new world economy because it will position itself as the new center of trade. Add to this Trump’s hostility toward America’s closest allies, and you will likely see Europe, Canada and even some of America’s Asian allies find a way to work with China.

Trump’s nostalgic worldview is rooted even further back than the 1960s. He looks fondly on the late 19th century, when, as he described this week, the United States had only tariffs and no income tax, and America was stronger economically than it has ever been compared with the rest of the world. This history is nonsense. In 1900, the United States accounted for about 16% of the global economy by one measure; it is now about 26% of it. Americans’ standards of living and health are much higher today.

But in acting out on his nostalgic fantasy, Trump might well end up dragging America back to what it was then: a poorer country, dominated by oligarchs and corruption, content to swagger around its backyard and bully its neighbors but marginal to the great currents of global economics and politics.

Email: fareed.zakaria.gps@turner.com.