RUTHFULLY YOURS

US president Donald Trump’s MAGA brand of foreign policy has been treated with contempt and consternation by much of the world. He has incited the ire of neoliberal theorists like Francis Fukuyama, as well as many European intellectuals, who rarely have much positive to say about America anyway. To them, Trump epitomises a destructive American arrogance and imperial delusions.

Whatever he may think of himself, Donald Trump is no Augustan figure, no colossus ready to conquer the known world. He is a phenomenon borne of concern about American decline, ranging from failing education levels and massive debt to frayed national coherence and fading industrial, even military, supremacy. He is driven not by imperial ambitions (despite his absurd claims about acquiring Greenland and Canada), but rather in response to the consequences of recent imperial overreach.

The old US foreign policy, argues secretary of state Marco Rubio, is ‘obsolete’. Attempts to reshape the world through unrestrained globalisation and foreign interventions have not only failed, he says, but are now also a ‘weapon being used against us’.

Even the name of Trump’s movement, MAGA, says it all. Make America Great Again implies that it is not so great now. Trump’s promised ‘golden age’, if it arrives at all, will be forged in a new mercantilist era that has been gradually embraced as well in Europe and supercharged by China’s drive to world preeminence.

Right now, America looks dominant largely because its traditional competitors – like the UK, Japan and the EU – are all suffering markedly worse economic and demographic crises. By 2050, the populations of Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea and Spain are all expected to drop significantly. Even China suffers from a diminishing workforce, an overreliance on manufactured exports, mass alienation among the young and educated, a massive real-estate collapse and capital flight.

However, other nations’ problems do not make America less vulnerable. The US’s own population growth has also slowed, and recent economic trends have mostly benefitted the affluent and those working for the government. The top 10 per cent of all earners now account for half of all spending. This is well above the roughly one-third of three decades ago. Partially this comes as many of the companies historically tied to high wages – US Steel, General Motors, RCA, Xerox, Intel and Boeing – have either disappeared or markedly declined.

Wall Street seems more concerned with making money from China than boosting the American economy. As American Prospect correctly points out, American investors are effectively funding China’s bid to displace the US as the world’s reigning superpower. America’s inability to build things – most notably commercial and military vessels – means that, even in terms of defence, its power is waning.

Trump came to office in large part in reaction to the abandonment of the national interest by the corporate and financial elites. According to one study, the growing trade deficit between the US and China cost us roughly 3.7million American jobs between 2001 and 2018. It was partially because of this abandonment of the working class by the global liberalised economy that Trump was able to win voters in once solidly Democratic industrial states, first in 2016 and then again last year.

Trump’s drive for tariffs makes sense in this light, particularly if the focus is to hurt the EU, where tariffs on US-made cars are four times higher than in the opposite direction. This is also often the case in such things as food, beverages and other agricultural products.

President Trump has called the EU’s trade policies an ‘atrocity’, as he attempts, however clumsily, to get America’s key trade partners to reduce their historically high protective barriers. His threats have also led some manufacturers to scrap plans to move production abroad. Honda has decided not to shift its production of new models to Mexico and has instead opted for Indiana. Pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and chipmaker TSMC have also been persuaded to invest billions to build new production sites in the US.

Yet for now, the American economy – outside the dynamic fossil-fuel sector – is dominated by companies that deal primarily with digital consumerism, information and communications. Some of the world’s most valuable firms – especially Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta and Apple – do not produce their hardware in the US, if they produce any physical goods at all. Indeed, the only big emerging industrial innovators are Tesla and Space X, both controlled by the notorious Elon Musk.

In the tech realm, the US still has a significant edge over Europe, which has become a perennial bit player. Not one of the top 10 firms in the sector is located there. Maybe that makes it easier for the EU bureaucracy to wage war on companies like Apple. The people who run tech giants are hardly Trumpistas, but they need Trump to block both European regulators as well as the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party, which has the tech oligarchs in its sights.

Europe faces more fundamental problems than tech penis envy. The continent falls well behind the US in creating new significant growth companies in any field. In the past half-century, 250 companies worth more than $10 billion were created in the US, compared with just 14 in Europe. Europe needs far more than just a better industrial policy. It needs a cultural revolution. ‘In Europe, you have to get permission today for anything’, one German investor told me recently. ‘In America, you do what you want and hope not to be caught.’

European leaders rightly disparage Trump’s often exaggerated claims on migration, climate change and trade. But their own populations have become more aligned with Trump’s views, even if they dislike the man himself. The right is on the rise, or actually in government, in Italy, the Netherlands, Hungary, Romania, Austria, Germany and France, as well as, increasingly, the UK.

The new world order poses a special challenge to the ensconced and self-regarding European establishment. Some hope that investors will prefer their party-line economies over the chaos associated with Trumpism. But separation from the US will come at a high cost after 80 years under the American defence umbrella.

Now Europe, led by Germany, will be forced to spend massively if it wants to be remotely competitive militarily with Russia and China. The resulting fiscal stress could undermine the sustainability of Europe’s massive welfare states. Taxes are already high and, today, many NATO countries, like Denmark and Italy, still boast essentially pop-gun militaries. Surprisingly, relatively few Europeans want to expand aid to Ukraine, although they boldly think others should. The fact that the Red Sea is being defended largely by the US and Israel demonstrates how Europe lacks the means and the will even to secure the trade routes it depends on, especially for energy.

Climate catastrophism further weakens Europe. EU and UK Net Zero policies essentially undermine Europe’s fading industrial economy, all to the benefit of China, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gasses. Some European leaders, like Keir Starmer, think a tilt to China will strengthen their hand. But dependence on Chinese batteries and EVs will likely accelerate the UK’s already rapid deindustrialisation.

Unless Britain and Europe radically change course, the continent’s only future will be in providing luxury goods and historic tourism to the affluent from America, China and India. In the world of power politics, the former caput mundi has been relegated, as one German observer put it, ‘to the kids’ table of international diplomacy’.

Instead of appealing to America’s traditional European allies, Trump seems more keen on working with Saudi Arabia, which has prodigious oil and wealth. This reflects the Trumpian worldview that the real battle lies with China, especially when it comes to seeking to influence the developing world and emerging markets, where Chinese mercantilism and aggression are a growing concern.

Another key priority in the new order lies with India, which is by some accounts already the world’s fifth-largest economy. A growing alliance with India seems to be on the Trump administration’s dance card. For starters, India is the soon-to-be recipient of advanced US F-35 stealth fighters. On top of that, two top Trump officials, national security chief Tulsi Gabbard and FBI director Kash Patel, are Hindus. Vice-president JD Vance’s wife, Usha, is also an Indian American.

Raw power politics, rather than Wilsonian idealism, is the new coin. Trump’s successful assault on China’s bid for control of the Panama Canal suggests some logic in his realpolitik. However, Trump’s relations with many developing countries, like South Africa and much of South America, remain fraught. Ultimately, the US cannot cede these areas to China. To avoid this, Trump needs to bite his tongue a bit, if he can manage it, and hold back the itchy finger.

We cannot assume the emerging world order will reprise the stability provided by the US after 1945, and especially following the fall of the Soviet Union. It was great while it lasted, even if we didn’t realise it at the time. Under Trump, America will act more like a traditional Great Power, driven both by its sense of vulnerability and strict national interests. What comes next won’t be pretty. But mourning the passing of the old order will not bring it back to life.

Joel Kotkin is a spiked columnist, a presidential fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University in Orange, California, and a senior research fellow at the University of Texas’ Civitas Institute.