Organizing around and without the US
Hello readers,
We skipped last week's newsletter to focus on getting the "Polycrisis 2025" year opener newsletter out on Phenomenal World. It came out around the same time that Trump announced the 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico and 10% on China; “temporary pause” on “all federal financial payments”; and the halting of USAID programs.
We declared we’d focus on the rest of the world rather than simply the chaos and destruction within and emanating from the US:
This year, as much as we pay attention to Trump’s chaos machine, we will focus more on the rest of the world’s efforts to organize itself around and without the United States.
We had a bit of debate about the phrase “around and without” which we used to describe what other countries were organizing in light of the US becoming increasingly capricious and unreliable. It is arguably logically incoherent (can a thing be the absence of a thing?). But we decided it was necessarily to hold that kind of dialectical tension.
Now that the Trump administration is planning to not just quit the Paris Agreement and the World Health Organization, but also to sanction the International Criminal Court and skip out on this year’s G20 in South Africa. And of course, cutting USAID dramatically, including reducing a staff of over 10,000 to 300 people. It’s all an incredible withdrawal from many forms of international aid, diplomacy and soft power, but it wasn’t a complete surprise, either; Trump 2.0 is a dramatic and deadly demonstration that the US isn’t a reliable partner, but indications preceded the current administration.
We do not think that China will simply swoop in and take up the role of alternative hegemon. Its own economy and political consensus make it unlikely to start providing significant boost to international aid, but shifts in trade will clearly take place. Colombia, which just clashed with Trump over deportations, has announced a new shipping route to Shanghai. In some cases other powerful countries are stepping in; Germany will take over from the US as co-lead of the Indonesian “JET-P” or Just Energy Transition Program.
In contrast to our sketch of the world away from the US, the “madman” approach to foreign policy does seem to be effective, at least in the very short term. In the past week, Japan and India have been pre-emptively trying to appease Trump by promising to buy more US energy exports and dropping tariffs on US imports, respectively. The vast US consumer market remains a powerful bargaining chip.
The media
A lot of news journalism is struggling to adapt to the nature and volume of what the Trump White House is inflicting. Big, credible news media outlets are mostly unable to imbue their reporting and run of top stories with the seriousness that is warranted: whether due to their proprietors, their finances, or other sources of obeisance towards Trump/Musk. But some have also been failed by their traditional approach to blending the technical and the political, making it difficult to meet the moment when the institutions they rely on are being dismantled in front of their eyes.
Elsewhere there is great writing going on. Nathan Tankus has been absolutely brilliant, from explaining the “trilemma” of the administration’s efforts to cut committed federal spending, to finding out what Musk and his young friends are doing to the Treasury payments system, and what kind of access they’d been granted. And Marisa Kabas scooped everyone on news of the OMB freezing all grants and loans.
Then there is Wired, which has also done incredible investigative work — and, crucially for a big publisher, is centering the story on its coverage and publishing some very strong comment and analysis (similarly, relatively new, journalist-owned tech publisher 404 Media is doing great), while other outlets are still allocating plenty of precious resources to their traditional news categories.
A few honourable mentions from the MSM:
“[O]nly one claim — out of 12 — was accurate” from the White House on USAID, finds the Washington Post.
Alan Beattie’s melancholy piece about the US HIV program that is being shuttered along with almost every other international aid effort.
“Trust, once broken, can be almost impossible to repair,” Bloomberg’s Karishma Vaswami on Asia’s response to all of this.
Propublica’s account of lifesaving USAID programs with little chance of reprieve.
FT Alphaville on the Wall Street analysts caught out by Trump actually doing some of the stuff he said he’d do.
And check out the new report from Tim and colleagues at the John Hopkins Net Zero Industrial Policy Lab have just published some analysis of how Brazil can make the most of its green industrial development aspirations.
See you next week; in the meantime we are on Bluesky: (Kate, Tim) or on email (Kate, Tim).