Is America Alone? Not Yet, But It’s Trying
The country’s role as the center of the financial world is getting uncomfortable scrutiny. That alone is troubling.
The US trade war is raising uncomfortable questions.
Photographer: Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images
This trade war is no ordinary crisis of the kind that buffeted capitalism periodically in the past few generations. It’s less a storm, Singapore’s deputy premier asserts, and more like “a tidal wave.” When leaders of a successful, trade-dependent nation talk this way, it demands attention.
And yet... for all its power, the analogy doesn’t quite capture the shift in mood since Donald Trump returned to the White House. There’s more to the sense of dislocation than mere tariffs — it’s the undergraduate way they were unveiled and then suspended. The independence of the Federal Reserve faces renewed threats. The bullishness with which US markets were regarded has dissipated; the dollar has been hammered, stocks are down, recession fears are up. And government bonds, not usually prone to sharp fluctuations, have gyrated in troubling ways.