This paper examines whether U.S. President Trump’s implementation of “reciprocal tariffs” and economic coercion policies after his 2025 return to office—targeting China, Japan, and the European Union—constitutes a non-war institutional turning point in the reorganization of the international order. Traditional theories of power transition and hegemonic stability argue that major systemic changes occur through hegemonic wars. However, this study contends that when a hegemon faces declining institutional returns and relative power erosion, it may employ economic coercion and institutional manipulation during peacetime to achieve preventive institutional reconfiguration, generating a “non-war breaking point” in order transformation.

Grounded in neoclassical realism, the analysis advances three hypotheses: the hegemon seeks to maintain asymmetric advantages, expands strategic flexibility through asymmetric alliances, and weaponizes structural power to compel concessions and reshape institutions. Using the Trump 2.0 administration’s trade negotiations with Japan, the EU, and China, the study demonstrates how coercive bilateralism redefined multilateral cooperation into transactional power-distribution relationships.

The findings suggest that Trump 2.0’s reciprocal tariff initiative represents a hegemon’s preventive response to institutional decay and rising challengers. It challenges the assumption that only hegemonic wars trigger order reorganization and introduces preventive institutional reconfiguration as a framework for understanding contemporary hegemonic order evolution.