Trump is bonkers
Donald Trump’s speech to the World Economic Forum at Davos was a rambling, incoherent mess. His letter to the Prime Minister of Norway was equally unhinged, blaming Norway’s failure to award him the Nobel Peace Prize for the crisis over Greenland.
He appears not to understand the difference between Norway and Denmark — or, more broadly, between reality and fantasy. Presumably Narnia is next on the list, to secure strategic supplies of Turkish delight.
Nor apparently does he understand that penguins don’t live in Greenland
He then left Davos on a broken-down plane, claiming he had agreed the framework of a deal that no one else present seems to recognise.
Even political allies like Robert Fico are expressing concern about the President’s fragile grip on reality and erratic through processes.
What makes this worse is that he could almost certainly have secured a better deal a year ago simply by asking. If he had requested expanded US basing rights and an economic partnership on rare earth minerals, he could likely have had both at minimal cost. Instead, by demanding absolute compliance and rejecting any limits on his power, he is actively dismantling the rules-based international order that has existed since the Second World War.
In the process, he is also attacking the international economic system that made America rich and created the modern global economy.
This isn’t just about power
The desire to tear down the existing international order isn’t driven only by greed or ego.
Globalisation increased inequality within countries like the UK and the US, but it reduced inequality between rich and poor countries. In global terms, inequality fell. One consequence was that the premium historically paid to white male workers in wealthy countries narrowed — not disappeared, but narrowed.
That erosion is a major factor behind support for Trump and Brexit.
What’s striking is that there is little evidence either Trumpism or Brexit has reversed this trend — or even that there is a serious plan to do so.
Globalisation also promoted a form of liberalism. Over decades of visiting India, I watched Western firms recruit whoever would make them the most money, with little concern for caste, skin tone or gender. This wasn’t altruism; it was capitalism. But the effect was socially liberal.
That, too, is a grievance.
Deep down, many of Trump’s supporters know that if competition were genuinely equal — across race, gender, sexuality or nationality — they would be worse off than they are now.
The irony
The great irony is that if the international economic order really is torn up, the world becomes brutally fair very quickly.
And the people most angry about the current system are the ones with the most to lose.
The order Trump seems intent on creating is one based on enclosed land, extractable resources and inherited wealth. Lavish lifestyles for a narrow oligarchy — of which the planned White House ballroom is merely the most visible symbol.
We’ve had economies like this before. They are slow-growing, inefficient and prone to collapse. They are particularly vulnerable to external shocks, including environmental change.
A child in charge
The President of the United States is a man with the mindset of a spoiled child. His debilitating solipsism is a threat to global stability.
A functional Congress would impeach and remove him. Instead, the Republican majority is locked in a codependent relationship, unable to separate the president’s identity from that of the party. His advisers are either cowed supplicants desperate to please, or scheming courtiers eager to exploit his power for their own ends.
What comes next?
A functioning international order is vastly preferable to the law of the jungle. But rebuilding one will not be easy.
It requires:
- faster and more inclusive growth
- significantly higher investment in public infrastructure
One possible route is a partnership of democracies committed to growth and free trade — the EU, the UK, Canada, Japan and others.
But any such effort would face sustained attempts at sabotage from the US, China and Russia, all fearful that success elsewhere might encourage their own citizens to ask for more.
That, in the end, is what Trumpism is really about: not making the world fairer, but stopping anyone else from noticing that it could be.
The tragedy isn’t that Trump is dismantling the post-war order. It’s that the people cheering loudest for its collapse are the ones who will pay the highest price for it.
He also called Greenland Iceland several times.
This would worry me if I was Icelandic. Surely impossible to muddle the two up, unless part of the strategy is to also take Iceland as well? Iceland has already ‘jokingly’ been mentioned as the 52nd state.
Mark my words, Iceland was only mentioned by Trump because its been mentioned to Trump, he’s just to far gone in the head to prevent the name from slipping out.
Greenland, Iceland, all the same when they’re peeled and boiled