In Donald Trump’s first term, he imposed a wide range of tariffs, many of which were kept in place during the Biden administration. He also promised more tariffs in his campaign. If this many are shocked, then it can only be because they didn’t think it would happen. That is to misread Donald Trump. He usually does what he says he’s going to do. The shock though is useful to him in that it amplifies the message.
For MAGA supporters, the fact that the establishment is shocked is a leading indicator of the new President’s performance in post. His approval ratings among his base are high. This is not just because he is their President but that they feel a corner has been turned. And based on evidence elsewhere, they’re probably right about that.
Cultural change always precedes political change
The pendulum has been swinging back for some time. To make sense of it all, we need to look at the wider context. The legacy of Covid is that we live in a different world. Everything has changed. If there were divisions before the pandemic, they were deepened and widened. Nothing is the same. Many are confused and disorientated. Polls don’t work. Experts are wrong. Strategy is dead because the underlying assumption is that it is time to devise and deploy one. Strategy is being replaced by fluency – the ability to join the dots.
As bad as some may view these developments, there is opportunity for those that care to look. If there was ever a time to change relationships, this is it. Change always benefits challengers. These will be characterized by their ability to leverage time zone, technology and treasury to create flexibility and new propositions. These sorts of companies have been waiting for this moment. When so much changes at once, no-one can stay the same. New ideas, new structures and new relationships are needed.
If we turned the clock back thirty years, we could see the opposite swing of the pendulum. The Berlin wall was coming down, Europe was putting in place free movement and extending its Schengen travel zone to China. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed in 1992 and went into effect on January 1, 1994.
The expansion and growth of the internet, air travel and migration followed on in the wake. This created what has been called ‘The Globalists’. You don’t need to look far to find out what the darker corners of the internet think of this. They associate globalism with Big pharma, Big Ag, Big food, Big government. Big is now bad. This is a driver behind the bases of the new political leaders like President Trump, Javier Milei, Victor Orban, Benjamin Netanyahu and President Erdogan and their EU challengers like Geert Wilders, Alice Weidel, Marine Le Pen, Georgia Meloni and Britain’s Nigel Farage.
The direction of travel
The direction of travel politically at least is clear. Nationalist movements and their love of barriers is here. The walls, fences and barriers are going up all over the world. Sometimes, these are physical, sometimes legal and or political. Tariffs are not just negotiation tactics. For instance, with Brexit, some say people didn’t vote to get poorer. This movement cares more about politics than economics. The MAGA movement is similar.
Many supporters of these politicians have seen nothing good from the globalism that came with the last thirty years. They’ve seen local communities and public services change dramatically, often for the worse. Cities on the other hand have done well. They’ve benefited from cheaper migrant labour, proximity to infrastructure and international capital. They were multicultural before. Even more so after. They adopted policies which reflected this. Covid widened and deepened the rural/urban split. This, incidentally, was also a split between old/young, rich/poor and left/right.
No-one can un-invent the iPhone, the internet, the jet engine or global capital. No-one can turn the clock back to before Covid. The new global market is being challenged by an old law that all politics is local. The era of the cross-border embrace is coming to an end. If business was struggling with technology and change in work culture, it now has something else to figure out.