Flip-Flopping Donald Trump Hastens the Death of Globalisation

Donald Trump's erratic tariff policies have triggered economic instability, accelerated deglobalisation, and jeopardised America's global leadership and economic credibility worldwide.

- JOHN DOBSON

"Trump is not like you or me, he is crazy. All bets are off." said the renowned American author Michael Wolff in "All or Nothing", published two months ago, the latest of his four best sellers on Donald Trump. Trump calls them works of fiction. Last week, as financial turmoil spread across the world and global markets spooked, all the result of Trump's sweeping tariffs, many found themselves moving to agree with Wolff's description of America's erratic and unpredictable 47th president.

As stock markets tumbled and consumer confidence plummeted, US economists at Goldman Sachs raised their assessment of the odds that America would tip into recession to 45% if the tariffs continued, up from 35% the week before. Other economists were raising similar alarms, with JP Morgan putting the odds of a US and global recession at 60%.

As much as Donald Trump mocked professional economists and made claims that tariffs would raise enormous amounts of revenue from foreigners, many disagreed, arguing that his policies would lead to ruin, destruction and decay. Republican political strategist, Antonia Ferrier, told the Spectator last week that if tariffs continued, "there is no amount of MAGA fairy dust that can hide how destructive these import taxes will be on working Americans. Unfortunately, we are all going to pay the price for Trump's single-minded commitment to destroying the global trading order, which has functioned smoothly since 1945 when America set the rules of the game, many of them in its own favour."

In the meantime, Donald Trump gloried in the world spotlight as he claimed to his adoring followers that global leaders were willing to do anything to make a trade deal with him as world-wide American tariffs come into force. "I'm telling you, these countries are calling us up, kissing my ass", he said during a speech at the National Republican Congressional Committee dinner in Washington last week.