> How is that? Are we taking stuff at the point of a gun?
No, but the USA is getting a lot of stuff in exchange for $$ which it can print for basically free. Consumers in the USA have benefitted a lot from this, which partly compensated the fact that more and more of the pie is going to the richest instead of the average American.
Dollar holdings outside the US come to about $1 trillion. What you are talking about there are holdings of debt. Yes, US prosperity has been propped up by borrowing increasing amounts of money. This is not sustainable.
One can view Trump's tariff actions as preparatory for US debt default. This would crash the dollar and make imports much more expensive.
The benefits would seem to flow to those countries that would have been swallowed up without Pax Americana.