Shakespeare's words have been quite resonant all through 2025

From Trump’ colossal stride to bad forecasts by juggling fiends,’ the bard often sprang to mind

- MADAN SABNAVIS

William Shakespeare excelled at stagecraft. The themes in his plays were simple, but their effect dramatic. The bard’s words still resonate in many contexts—such as the economic themes of 2025.

In Julius Caesar, Cassius tells Brutus, ‘Why, man, he doth stride the narrow world like a Colossus, and we petty men....’ The man who bestrode the world this year was Donald Trump, who unsettled everyone each time he spoke of US tariffs. While game theory would have urged countries to collaborate on a pushback, with the exception of India and China, we saw wide acceptance.

His influence extended to another theatre: markets. But the latter coined the term ‘Taco,’ short for ‘Trump always chickens out.’ If there was method here, it was probably leveraged by market players who took Banquo’s words in Macbeth as advice to ‘look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not.’ Investors could have used stock indices battered by Trump’s announcements as buying opportunities for big money to be made after a chickening-out reversal of steep tariffs that would send prices back up.

The arclights of 2025 were also on the US Federal Reserve's chair, Jerome Powell, who was harangued all through the year by the White House for not lowering rates as fast as it wanted. Given the inflation threat of tariffs, he held off till September. In this subplot, Powell could have echoed Caesar: ‘But I am constant as the northern star.’ Inflation in the US is above the Fed's 2% target, but we can expect further rate cuts.