By Jeremy Kinsman

April 7, 2025

On April 2, or what Donald Trump declared “Liberation Day” (The Economist called it “Ruination Day”), leaders and citizens across the interconnected world paused for an hour to watch an American president launch a global trade war.

Abusing yet again the power of the captive audience that comes with the office, Trump unleashed the most destructive set of measures of his presidential chaos operation to date, in the bitterly ironic name of “Making America Great Again”. But, as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney warned this week, “I have seen this movie before (Brexit). I know exactly what is going to happen. The Americans are going to get weaker.”

US stock exchanges shed $5 trillion of value over the subsequent two days, entering “bear market” territory with no exit in sight. A few Trump allies jibed that it looked like an “old-fashioned market panic,” but the near-consensus view in financial communities was decidedly grim. JP Morgan assessed there is now a 60% chance of a US and global recession.

US partners were not forewarned of the extent or depth of the tariffs, nor of specific rates. The details, deliberately obfuscated in advance for maximum shock value on delivery, only sunk in over the course of Trump’s carnival barker performance.

It had the air of a Trump political rally, replete with magnified grievances over how America has been “looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far,” an outrage of calculated projection by a President of the United States undertaking an unprovoked, global economic assault. Trump has increased US tariffs from an average of 2.5% to their highest level in a century, 22%. China, the economic and geopolitical player most likely to benefit from Trump’s trade war, swiftly announced retaliatory tariffs of its own.

Leaders from the democratic and free-market world which the US had led for 80 years, hesitate still to denounce Trump personally in public. But their outrage at reckless US pseudo-economic rationales suggests dark evaluations of the psychology behind the chaos. The Economist captured the consensus view that “almost everything he said — on history, economics, and the technicalities of trade” was “utterly deluded,” “drivel,” and “flat-out nonsense.”

Trump-world’s measure of success appears to be all the American failure corruption can buy, with national interest subjugated to an oligarchy bent on brutality, personal profiteering and the daily deployment of a friendly-fire presidency fronted by a firehose of ludicrous propaganda.

Having long proclaimed its exceptionalism and national vocation to lead the world as “the indispensable nation,” America is now led by an autocrat who demonstrates no support for democratic values, open markets, or the rule of law. Trump asserted April 2 that his objective is simply to make America “so much wealthier than any country,” which, based on the likely economic isolation produced by his trade war, will remain as aspirational as it is disingenuous.

The Financial Times‘ Gillian Tett cites Canadian Princeton scholar Jeremy Adelman‘s biography of the late economist Albert Hirschman to frame Trump’s view of international commerce within “a form of imperialism which did not require conquest to subordinate weaker trading partners.”

Partners now take seriously Trump’s apparent linkage between forceful economic unilateralism and eccentric ambitions to aggrandize America territorially, absorbing Greenland, or even Canada. The day after he announced punishing tariffs, Secretary of State Marco Rubio nonetheless warned NATO members in Brussels that the US — now arguably the greatest threat to global security via its deliberate attack on global economic security — still expects them all to hoist military spending to 5% of GDP. Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly had the temerity to point out US unreality hypocrisy, and Rubio left for home early.

Almost overlooked as a side story is the destruction these tariffs wreak on very poor countries, already further impoverished by the Trump/Musk obliteration of USAID. Hunger hastens war.

Meanwhile, despite Trump’s bragging that he would “end in a day” the war in Ukraine, no end is in sight. Rubio asserted at NATO that stalemated wars must end by negotiation, which everybody knows. But Ukraine and NATO allies genuinely ask themselves whose side Trump’s America is on.

I write from Britain, where harsh opinion of Trump has begun to metastasize to “America” itself. Before the current chaos, surveys already showed plummeting public approval of the US in the UK, France, and Germany.

Abusing yet again the power of the captive audience that comes with the office, Trump unleashed the most destructive set of measures of his presidential chaos operation to date, in the bitterly ironic name of ‘Making America Great Again’.

The UK is in a delicate position, marooned by Brexit. UK military and financial communities seem psychologically staked in retaining belief in the “special relationship” with the US, sustained perhaps by muscle memory of more glorious days. But the economy is flat, with national debt-service payments aggravating budgets for the struggling Labour government. Though the EU accounts for 41% of UK exports, Prime Minister Keir Starmer hesitates rejoining the EU’s single market as a non-member, from fear of opposition Brexit diehards (55% of UK voters now consider Brexit a mistake, compared to 30% supporting the decision).

Starmer counts on the elusive “prize” of a comprehensive trade deal with the US, (now accounting for 22% of UK exports), and removal of the 10% tariff on the UK, short of the 20% assigned to members of the EU. However, Starmer aligns with more congenial European partners France and Germany on global economic policy and international security issues.

His positioning mirrors Tony Blair’s, who famously refused to “choose” between Europe and the US, and resembles Italy’s Giorgia Meloni’s, who is at least more ideologically aligned with Trump. But Trump’s policies and belligerence are destabilizing allies by both breaking from American history and confounding diplomacy.

Trump made his animosity to Europe explicit in February, proclaiming bafflingly that “the EU was organized to screw the US. That’s the purpose of it. They’ve done a good job of it.” During the much-derided “SIGNAL” conference call, his national security stars mocked “Europe” as “pathetic,” having already characterized Starmer’s efforts to put together a post-truce peace force for Ukraine as a “posture and pose.”

At the Munich Security conference in January, Vice-President Vance derided European democracy while openly rooting for far-right European renegade parties. Vance’s subsequent arrogant visit to Greenland further tested the bounds of credulity, already dislocated by the horrible public attack he and Trump had mounted in the Oval Office against Volodymyr Zelensky.

European leaders are less concerned by boorish behaviour from second-rate Trump appointees than by the implications of the question asked last week by ex-Ambassador to NATO and China Nicholas Burns at the Kennedy School, “Why would we forsake our allies?” Germany’s Merz, Poland’s Tusk, France’s Macron, the EU’s Von der Leyen, conclude publicly they can’t afford to rely on the predictability and loyalty of America today. They see the world as irrevocably changed by Trump’s upending of support for cooperative internationalism.

I am struck (having represented Canada in Europe in multiple functions) by the extent to which Prime Minister Mark Carney has become the personification of hope for an end to this crisis, even an inspiration. British TV has repeatedly replayed Carney’s affirmation that Canada’s old relationship with the US is “over”, along with his vow to “fight, protect, and build.” I am told it is similarly replayed in Germany, the Netherlands, and the Czech Republic.

Will Hutton, (Guardian columnist and president-designate of the Academy of Social Sciences), posted on X Monday: “The UK needs to integrate with the EU fast along with Canada to create a sane economic bloc and then launch a big reflationary package. And do it fast-really fast. The world needs leadership.”

In his Observer column on Sunday, Hutton wrote, “In this respect, Mark Carney, if confirmed as Canadian prime minister, is pivotal…Carney’s response to Trump’s menacing threats is to re-orient Canada around a new global trade order – in which Britain is well placed to help.”

For Canada, the message of this seismic crisis is clear — any smaller country that is 80% dependent on a larger neighbour needs to diversify. The Europeans — and the British — are more open now to serious project-sharing with Canada’s “other North America” than ever before.

People of goodwill here retain hope that under steadier hands, the US will recover its balance and restore its foundational ideals. It is up to Americans to reclaim them. In Europe and the UK, the debate continues over the choice of retaliation against the US or diplomatic outreach and possible conciliation with this administration. But there is no doubt the world won’t return to the equilibrium, trust, and synchronies that Trump’s corruption, treachery, temperament, and choices have dislocated.

Despite stressful times ahead, there is a groundbreaking opportunity for a reanimated Canada to prosper in greater certainty in a reaffirmed open world order in which we count less on America, and more on ourselves.

Policy Contributing Writer Jeremy Kinsman was Canada’s ambassador to Russia, high commissioner to the UK, ambassador to Italy and ambassador to the European Union. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the Canadian International Council.