Disruptive Don Digs In

The second coming of the orange messiah has been nothing less than a cataclysm—for his own flock as well as unwitting swathes of the animal kingdom.

- AMITAVA SANYAL

Known for lending his body as a lightning rod at evangelical prayer meetings and for favouring a particular shade of bronzing material that would make kumquats blush, Donald the Disruptor is doing pretty much what he had promised in his second act—unleashing a tariff war on all comers, penguins-only islands included. It's the chronicle of a derangement foretold.

Irony drips from the situation as an extra helping of cheese from the 78-year-old's favourite McDonald's burger. Historians have pointed out that the ongoing tariff tantrum borrows its template from the Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930, which deepened the Great Depression by raising import duties and tanking global trade.

The less-heeded fact is that it was never formally repealed. Instead, Franklin D Roosevelt usurped the US Congress's power to set tariffs and vested it in the presidency. A lever that the 32nd US president used to lift a depression is being used by the 47th incumbent to force a recession down the world's throat.