Even in war, America’s business must go on

One hundred years ago, President Calvin Coolidge, famously said that “the chief business of the American people is business.” His comments came amid a period of pro-business regulation, technological advance, growth and impending economic uncertainty. 

The same can be said today. The parallels between the Coolidge-era 1920s and the 2020s are strikingly similar: soaring equity markets, transformative technologies reshaping productivity, and a cultural sense of economic momentum, paired with underlying structural vulnerabilities. There is also a symmetry between the then-prevailing strain of economic nationalism and today’s America First economic and political agenda.

For the last 25 years, American business and Chinese manufacturing formed the backbone of global growth. Today, American business is the engine driving the global economy, setting the pace for global growth. When America invests, the world innovates. When America buys, the world produces. And when America leads, the global economy moves in lockstep. But now, in the midst of a regional war and bilateral trade tensions, this tenet is being tested. 

Global conflict is reshaping supply chains in real time. American business has long depended on stable global trade routes, but the conflicts in Iran and Ukraine have disrupted shipping lanes, raised insurance costs for maritime transport and caused most companies to reroute their supply chains through India, Vietnam and Mexico. 

America remains the anchor, but the system around us is more volatile than at any time since the 1940s. But with export controls, tariffs and investment restrictions, those gains have become tempered with growing pains. And U.S.–China trade tensions are testing the limits of our global trade interdependence.

Even so, commerce continues. Orders are still being placed and goods are still moving. Chinese factories and suppliers are still producing for American companies, of all sizes, at a scale that cannot be replicated anywhere else in the world. American companies ranging from mom and pop shops selling on Amazon to big box stores like Walmart rely on Chinese suppliers to develop and deliver the goods U.S. consumers need and want. However the experts explain this, the reality is that it is not going away.

The idea that U.S. companies can simply pivot and unwind decades of on-the-ground integration, or start fresh somewhere else, may be politically appealing. But it is just not realistic — at least, not immediately. So the question for American business leaders and policymakers is, how do we manage these global trade challenges both in peace and at a time of war? 

Pundits and the media are fond of blaming “supply chain problems” for economic hiccups they cannot explain. Although supply chain problems are real, they are not the only reason global business slows down, particularly at the consumer good level. 

In China, for example, there are myriad forces, including political, regulatory and extra-legal, that can stop or delay the delivery of products destined for the U.S. A shipment can be held up not just by a broken conveyor belt but by a local official’s priorities, a revised regulatory rule, or an unwritten political signal. Even with airtight contracts, these hidden pressures shape outcomes every day. And now, in the midst of war and rising trade tensions, the frictions are magnified. 

In times like this, trade and commerce often depends on something harder to quantify: the steadiness of long‑standing relationships, the ability to read the moment, and the quiet, almost diplomatic, understanding that allows business to keep moving when formal mechanisms are unreliable or under strain. The reality is that even in wartime, the world does not stop trading — it adjusts, improvises, and finds new routes. 

Today’s trade frictions with China are real, but they have not halted the movement of goods or the determination of companies on both sides to serve their customers. What keeps the system functioning is the same force that carried the country through earlier periods of uncertainty: the resilience of American business and their determination to meet the growing demands of American consumers in spite of global challenges. Innovation, too, plays a big part in this minuet, as more companies find new ways to conquer new challenges. 

Coolidge was right. Even in war, the business of America is still business — not as a matter of nostalgia, but as a matter of fact.  

Adonis Hoffmanis a lawyer, analyst, and independent counsel who served in senior roles at the FCC and in the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs.

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