President Donald Trump has made clear his intention to shatter the prevailing world economic order. And in 100 days, it has advanced significantly in achieving that goal.
Trump has caused a commercial war, has discarded treaties and has suggested that Washington may not defend Europe. It is also dismantling the government infrastructure that has provided technical knowledge and experience.
The changes have been deep. But the world is still stirring. The intermediate elections within two years could erode the republican majority in Congress. And Trump’s reign must end constitutionally within four years. Could the next president come and undo what Trump’s government has done?
As Cardinal Michael Czerny said about the Catholic Church, a close collaborator of Pope Francis: “There is nothing we have done over 2000 years that it cannot be reversed.”
The same could be said of world geopolitics. However, even in this initial phase, historians and political scientists agree that, in some crucial aspects, the changes caused by Trump can be difficult to reverse.
As the erosion of trust in the United States, a resource that cost generations to build.
“The Maga and JD Vance base will continue to exist long after Trump is gone,” said Ian Goldin, professor of globalization and development at the University of Oxford. Regardless of who then occupies the White House, the conditions that promoted the movement “let’s make the United States again” – the growing inequality and economic insecurity – are maintained. For the rest of the world, there is still concern, he said, that there can be “another Trump in the future.”
Consequently, allies are working to establish commercial associations and build security alliances that exclude the United States. The European Union and the South American countries recently created one of the world’s largest commercial areas.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, recently proposed to build new transport networks to facilitate access to world markets outside the United States. Canada is also negotiating to join the European military reinforcement to reduce its dependence on the United States, while the United Kingdom and the European Union are working to finalize the details of a defense pact.
“The world advances,” Goldin said. The supply chains will be reorganized, new associations and foreign technological researchers and talents will find other places to emigrate. “The United States will not quickly recover its economic position,” he said.
“And not only the United States is so different now,” he added. Trump is emboldened autocratic leaders around the world, which further weakens the standards -based system.
Second, Trump’s disdain for international institutions only reinforces the influence of China, the main objective of its attempts to use economic pressure.
The government is creating “immense moments of opportunity for Xi Jinping and China,” said Orville Schell, director of the United States-China Relations Center of the Asian Society of New York.
The top Chinese leader, XI, tries to take advantage of Trump’s protectionist turn and his chaotic policy changes to better position Beijing as a free trade defender and new leader of the world commercial system.
XI’s argument resonates especially among many emerging economies from Latin America, Asia and Africa. China seems “firm and stable and an image of equanimity compared to the United States,” said Jonathan Czin, a member of the China center of the Brookings institution and former main analyst of China for the central intelligence agency.
Africa is a good example. Trump has dismantled the United States Agency for International Development, which provided food and health care to the poorest in the world. And the Reorganization Plan of the State Department has proposed to eliminate almost all diplomatic missions in the continent.
In comparison, China has already invested deeply in Africa as part of its belt initiative and the route, and its impulse to control more essential minerals of the continent. “Creates a vacuum that allows China to consolidate that position and control over those mining rights,” said Czin.
Trump’s hostility towards his allies could also undermine government efforts of recent years to maintain advanced technology out of the reach of China. These previously narrow relationships were crucial to persuade the Netherlands and Japan to stop exports of advanced semiconductor equipment to China.
Antony Hopkins, professor of history at the University of Cambridge, added that Trump was forgetting the important role that China played as an international investor and buyer of US debt. If China’s access to the great American consumer market is severely restricted, “you are courting the possibility of harming China’s ability to invest in US Treasury bonds, and if you do, you are shot in your foot.”
Another region trapped between the United States and China is Southeast Asia. But when Trump threatened, and then suspended until the beginning of July, with imposing potentially ruinous tariffs on the export -oriented economies of countries such as Vietnam, Bangladés and Indonesia, China obtained an opportunity to strengthen ties.
Finally, the evisceration of the research and collection of federal government data threatens to undermine scientific excellence and the competitive advantage of the United States. According to the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, the Federal Government finances approximately 40 percent of the long -term basic research that supports the technological and scientific advances in the country.
The Government is cutting billions of dollars in grants to universities, scientists and researchers, undermining work on issues such as environmental risks, disease control, programs on climate and clean energy, computer processing, agriculture, defense and artificial intelligence. It has drastically trimmed the financing of cybersecurity work that protects the electricity network, pipelines and telecommunications. He fired thousands of veteran and promising experts.
Institutions are concerned about brain escape, since US and foreigners researchers go to other places in search of scholarships, jobs and academic freedom.
Nor will it be easy to quickly reconstitute the networks of people, assistance, information and logistics knowledge of the organisms that have dissolved or emptied.
“This is a revolution dedicated to destroying not only policies, but also institutions,” said Schell in Asian society. Even if the Democrats recover power, it is not clear “if there will be a structure to revive or if it will have to be rebuilt hard.”
Sometimes, an emblematic event such as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 serves as an end point to an era. But it is not always clear in real time if the tension on a system is so extreme that it cannot be recovered.
Many people thought that the “Nixon Shock” represented such a break, said David Ekbladh, professor of History of the University of Tufts. In 1971, President Richard Nixon ended the fixed exchange rate system and separated the value of the US gold dollar.
The writer William Greider described him as a “precise date in which the unique mastery of the United States” over the world economy ended. Chaos wrapped world markets, and the United States allies feared that President’s unilateral decision will undermine the postwar cooperative system. However, the general economic order remained.
“The game changed, but it wasn’t a revolution,” said Ekbladh. Negotiations continued to open the markets, the United States alliances remained intact and the group of the 10 negotiated a new agreement. International respect for the rule of law prevailed, and the United States remained universally considered the leader of the free world.
The question for the United States is now to what extent the support of the system that was, said Ekbladh. These currents of deep discontent with the world economy have been built for a long time, and many people voted to Trump for their promise to put the system up. “Do the American people want to disappear?”