And as U.S. stock markets plunged following his announcement of sweeping tariffs on 180 countries this week, Trump beamed that all would soon rebound and boom. America’s heading to glory days. Vice President JD Vance, meanwhile, complained critics were taking far too short-term a view: “We’re going to have a booming stock market for a long time because we’re reinvesting in the United States of America,” he said.
But the heavy-handedness Trump displayed, all based on cockamamie calculations and deeply flawed economics, is as maddening as King George’s restrictive trade practices toward the American colonies — and at least the British monarch had the mitigating excuse of episodes of clinical madness.
Trump’s declaration of economic independence and embrace of 19th-century protectionism amounts to slamming the door on the rest of the world — and it will likely have the unintended consequence of the rest of the world deciding, albeit painfully and slowly, to remake a new global trade order to replace the one America shaped, prospered from and has now abandoned.
It will also have geopolitical consequences, as many countries are already exploring new bilateral trade deals or examining how to expand regional trading blocs. U.S. allies Japan and South Korea, for example, are seeking to bolster trade ties with China and are talking about accelerating negotiations on their trilateral free trade agreement. And the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership are now looking to integrate faster.
In the meantime, for Americans and much of the world, Trump’s self-styled “Liberation Day” is bound to deliver a severe economic shock — one more likely than not to trigger a global recession.
International Monetary Fund Director Kristalina Georgieva has so far restricted herself to warning that Trump’s tariffs represent “a significant risk” to the global economy. But analysts at JPMorgan have raised their risk assessment of a global recession to 60 percent — up from a previous prediction of 40 percent — warning customers that the impact could be “magnified by retaliation, supply chain disruptions, and a sentiment shock.”
