Trump is promoting the idea of utterly reckless government, using the USA as his testbed for doing so

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Andrew Rawnsley, yesterday in The Observer, and Martin Wolf, today in the FT, both have articles on the nightmare that a Trump government is creating for the UK government.

This is, of course, the corollary of the argument that I posted this morning that Trump himself will have a nightmare 2025 trying to deliver the policies he has promised, given that he will need to do so very quickly if he is to have any chance in the mid-term elections in 2026.

Does that mean that I disagree with Andrew Rawnsley and Martin Wolf? No, it does not. I entirely agree with them. Trump's arrival in the White House creates a nightmare, not just for the UK but other countries in the world, as Trump promotes the idea of utterly reckless government, using the USA as his testbed for doing so.

Within the existing framework of the UK economy, Trump's proposal of tariffs on trade is massively harmful to our economy, and to presume that he will not deliver on this policy would be very unwise.

The fact that the UK is outside Europe at this moment does make it more vulnerable than it would otherwise be.

And let's not pretend that if Trump tries his policy of expelling migrants, there will not be a flood of people out of the USA, some of whom will wish to come to the UK and claim political asylum here. Not all of them will have been expelled. Some will make a claim on the basis that they have a reasonable fear that they might be persecuted if they stayed in the USA, and given all that Trump has said about his plans for his opponents, that would appear to be entirely reasonable.

Then there is the issue of security.  It seems highly likely that Trump is intent on making the situation in the Middle East more unstable by supporting Israel more wholeheartedly (hard as that is to believe). He is simultaneously appearing to support Putin when it comes to Ukraine, and within the current constructs, both policies are likely to create considerable instability.

If Labour are not panicked by all this, they should be. I might be entirely right in suggesting that Trump might have a nightmare in 2025 because trying to do so many reckless things at once might well backfire on him, but that does not mean that there will not be consequences around the world from his trying to achieve these goals. Rarely have we faced a situation that is more unstable.

But let me add one caveat, which is that this situation should provide us with the opportunity to discuss whether trade at current volumes is really desirable in the future, and it should also provide the opportunity to discuss whether there are better ways of managing international relations than we have used of late given the obvious failure of the current system.  I am not in any way exonerating Trump's policy by saying this. What I am saying is that he is reacting very inappropriately to stresses that do obviously exist within the architecture of international relations at present, and that wise reaction would require that we consider what to do next if we are to solve many of the problems that we face.


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