Half the world is currently trying to understand the logic behind Donald Trump's toupee. Analysts, academics, journalists, and citizens from around the world are trying to understand the rationale behind the US president's sartorial behavior and how it works. Stupefied, they try to understand his reasons in order to foresee the main lines of his disconcerting political actions. There have been many interpretations of his narcissism, his hypertrophic ego, and so many other psychological characteristics, but perhaps there's no need to go into too much detail and understand that Donald Trump is simply a speculator. He negotiates from positions of strength, without going beyond his own economic benefit, and ruthlessly extorts his opponents. Neither coherence nor truth seem to limit his executive capacity. Trump governs with a war mentality, just as he conducts business, campaigns, and engages in sexual intrigue.
While economists try to predict the effects of the tariffs, announced on a sort of auction board, and wonder what consequences they will have on the global economy in the medium term, Trump is playing at sowing panic to negotiate better. He speculates to draw those affected into a bilateral negotiation that deprives them of collective bargaining power. Since we have never seen such a huge set of tariffs implemented, it is difficult to predict their consequences, but for the lives of Americans, we are not talking about a few more dollars to buy a toaster, but thousands to buy a car, fill the shopping cart, or pay a mortgage. The first days of destruction of the global trade framework in the US indicate sharp falls in markets and a panorama of rising prices, a weakening dollar (7%), and at the same time a foreseeable stagnation of interest rates and the economy.
The new US administration has blown up decades of negotiations and trade balances by interpreting what is a sophisticated chain of international suppliers and partners as a simple relationship with an army of "swindlers." People taking advantage of American magnificence.
The effects on Europe will depend on the capacity for collective bargaining and whether it pays in kind, raising tariffs or not in response to the 20% general impact. For now, the EU will respond next week to the 25% increase on steel and aluminum and hopes to establish communication channels, currently practically useless, to address the rest. The EU will have to decide to what extent an interconnected world can drag it closer to China.
Trump's contempt for the European model, in which each individual's income is not their only social value, heralds a difficult negotiation. What can change the balance of power? May the deterioration of the US economy accelerate and citizens understand that voting is not a game without consequences, neither for their pocketbooks, nor for their limited health services, nor for their patriotic values.
Trump represents the exact opposite of the networked and cooperative world that was once portrayed as a horizon of progress. A world built on the trust of people in the exercise of their commercial and human relations, which foster an entrepreneurial spirit, as opposed to the fear and withdrawal that he symbolizes. The values of that liberal, meritocratic, and welcoming society have collapsed. The new mentality in vogue is one of distrust, threat, insecurity, and closure to protect oneself from foreigners. It seems contradictory, but today in a country of immigrants and grandchildren of immigrants, the idea has taken hold that the world is a hostile place full of foreigners to be feared.
Trump's policies are destroying the best of the United States, what has made it a prosperous, rich, and free country. Today, the MAGA reaction attacks the institutions and communities most involved in international exchange: researchers, scientists, universities, the diplomatic corps, foreign aid agencies, and international alliances such as NATO and the UN.
Faced with this onslaught, it seems that some Democrats and a few Republicans, who until now had been comfortable and complacent, smiling placidly while waiting for the shipwreck, are beginning to wake up. In the process of waking up, it has been necessary for water to enter all channels of the economy, trade, immigration, individual rights, asylum policy, the few public services—whether in healthcare or education—academic freedom in universities, and scientific research.
Americans will have to understand that they are citizens and that they can and must exercise their citizenship if they want to halt not only the decline but also the recession and the collapse of founding values, which were crucial in key moments like World War II. It's no longer just a question of pocketbooks, but of identity. And of course, this has costs.
