Trump’s building a new world order, and there’s a method to his ‘madness’ |
Trump’s presence at last month’s World Economic Forum in Davos was about one thing: showing the rich and powerful who is boss. As his commerce secretary made clear in the Swiss resort: “With President Trump, capitalism has a new sheriff in town.”
In the run-up to the summit, Trump ramped up threats against Greenland, forcing Western leaders to finally recognise that underneath the bluster, Trump may be serious about shaking up their world. Taken together with Trump’s invasion of Venezuela and ongoing tariff wars, the United States president’s actions suggest an emerging model of capitalism built less on market rules and more on direct state coercion and geopolitical competition.
Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney put it eloquently when he said that Trump represented “a rupture, not a transition”. The international rules-based order is shot through with hypocrisy and double standards, Carney argued, but still, this American-dominated economy has delivered a degree of stability for countries like Canada; today, “this bargain no longer works”.
Carney is right. Trump is leading an attempt to transform the international order. And that means changing the way capitalism works.
For decades, we have lived under a neoliberal form of capitalism. In theory, this system was based on the rule of the free market. In reality, it was a highly monopolistic system, with major decisions about how we live being taken by an ever more concentrated group of business leaders and wealthy investors. Such a system has driven historically unprecedented levels of inequality and environmental destruction and eroded democracy to the........