Fault Lines: How tariffs Shattered the Western Order

Fault Lines: How Tariffs Shattered the Western Order By Patrick Fleckney

What if the next great war wasn’t fought with bullets, but spreadsheets?

In Fault Lines: How Tariffs Shattered the Western Order, Patrick Fleckney delivers a chilling, brilliantly-researched exposé of how one political manoeuvre-tariffs-triggered a cascade of geopolitical shocks, upending the global order piece by piece. This isn’t dry economics. It’s a narrative charged with urgency, consequence, and humanity.From the clang of Sheffield steel mills to the humming chip plants of Silicon Valley, this book journeys through the industrial arteries of the West as they seize under the weight of economic nationalism.

At the heart of it all is Trump’s second presidency and a doctrine that turned trade policy into artillery. Each chapter reveals how tariffs, once dismissed as bureaucratic tinkerings, became acts of war cloaked in legislation.In vivid, forensic detail, Fleckney guides us through the fallout: fractured supply chains, civil unrest, collapsing alliances, and a democratic West blindsided by its own complacency.

Canada reels from annexation jibes. Europe fractures under pressure. Britain, still staggering post-Brexit, finds itself economically marooned. And in the shadows, China calibrates its response with surgical precision.But this is more than a chronicle of collapse.

Fault Lines is also a story of resilience-of workers, communities, and local leaders who refuse to be erased by global decisions made far above their heads. It’s a warning-and a reckoning.If you think tariffs are mere numbers on a page, think again.Because this time, the first shot of war came with a signature, not a siren.