It wasn't xenophobia, the West has been gradually waking up to the realization that their idea of converting countries into more ideal partners by building strong trade is not really working as the countries they're trying to influence will just take the benefits and not reciprocate.
It has become especially clear over the past few years, first with COVID highlighting the fragility of supply chains dependent on such one-sided relations and now with the invasion of Ukraine showing that such relations may also not be as strong of a deterrent against war as previously hoped.
The traded deals are very far from the charity of the west.
The traded deals by the west were based on the benefit to the western countries. It is not a charity. The low inflation, the record profit of the western companies and bonuses are from cheap labour and resources from more desperate countries.
Of course they weren't charity, they were mutually beneficial. The entire point being that offering mutually beneficial deals would lead to reciprocation with more mutually beneficial deals, building a dependency on maintaining such mutual deals.
In the same way that the US and EU going to war or even just breaking off diplomatic ties is extremely unlikely to happen due to how much they have integrated with each other on the back of mutual benefit.
I wish this this true : "deals on mutual benefit". The Relationship are based on leverage though.
There is no way my country able to ban US product or prevent US taking over strategic company based on security concern. Election interference and fake news from the West is also a normal things.
Imposition of market liberalism, to me at least, feels like an extension of that perceived Western superiority, especially combined with the hubris that The End of History drew from.
It has become especially clear over the past few years, first with COVID highlighting the fragility of supply chains dependent on such one-sided relations and now with the invasion of Ukraine showing that such relations may also not be as strong of a deterrent against war as previously hoped.