Trump's 'trade tsunami' unsettles geopolitics

Visiting Beijing at the height of US President Donald Trump's "Liberation Day" trade war rhetoric this April, Kenyan President William Ruto described a “broken... global order”. He declared that Kenya would work with China to build a “fair, inclusive and sustainable... world order”.

- Peter Apps

Even at the time, it looked like a particularly brazen example of a developing nation that traded heavily on its ties with the US and had become the only declared “major non-Nato ally” of Washington on the African continent in 2024 largely as a result of its declared support for Ukraine.

Now, Kenya faces a review in the US Senate of whether it deserves to retain that position given its ties with Iran and China in particular.

And with Kenyan newspapers reporting an imminent trade deal with Beijing with zero apparent trade barriers, just as Mr Trump imposes 10% tariffs on Kenya, Mr Ruto implied there was now little choice which side to pick.

“I have a bit of a problem with some of our friends,” Mr Ruto told an investment event in Nairobi this week, citing worries about the closer relations with Beijing. “But it’s what I must do for Kenya.”

Mr Trump's administration sees its embrace of tariffs as key to its approach to the wider world, including matters of war and peace including Russia and Ukraine, China and Taiwan as well as efforts to stem cross-border drug flows from Mexico and Canada.

For multiple nations in the so-called “Global South”, what Indian newspapers have called a “trade tsunami” have come as a dramatic shock to countries that have long been used to walking an awkward path between various foreign power blocs.

In some cases, as with Kenya, that may simply have accelerated shifts already underway.

In others, such as India, the world’s most populous democracy and fifth largest economy, it risks reversing decades of gradually built improvements in relations with successive US administrations.

It is a dynamic that reached a particular height this month, with Mr Trump's administration unveiling its latest tariffs on every nation in the world, just as Mr Trump threatened to impose further trade costs on Russia's trading partners — particularly India and China — if there was no ceasefire in Ukraine soon.