Whatever you might think of the WTO, a unilateral pullout and imposition if broad tariifs would be the worst shock to global markets since the wall Street crash. I'm starting to think Trump is actually a Marxist plant who wants to dismantle capitalism.
As far as the EU goes, Trump is right. It was, in part, created as a one-Europe government to counter the United States.
Look come off it. Excessive sabre-rattling is not healthy for the global economy (and, although many nationalists seem to act in disbelief, their precious nation-states are part and parcel of the global economy no matter how many flags they wave impotently).
It's clear that Trump wants to do a sort of game theory "act mad and hope everybody else is so freaked out they start backing down". We've seen how this worked out when Greece did it. They failed because everyone knows Greece weren't foolish enough to actually withdraw from the Eurozone and the EU called their bluff, leading to the current sorry situation. trump's "SEUPER DEAAL MAKING!1!!1" will only have power if Trump is willing to follow through with such threats. So if he doesn't, he'll be an impotent loser who will have to make some crummy deal and pretend it was some major victory and if he does, well, I hope he actually educates himself on the implication of the threats he makes.
all of trump's seemingly self-disqualifying plans - the casual use of nuclear weaponry, of unilateral tariffs and sanctions on countries, on the seizure and plunder of resources of foreign countries (allied, neutral and enemy), on withdrawal from NATO, Nafta and the WTO, on the default of the national debt - are defended on similar grounds. Trumo doesn't really mean these things, he's just putting out out-there positions for the sake of barter. NATO countries, so fearful of losing funding, will up their military spending ASAP. China, fearful of losing access to the American market for exports will immediately drop their protectionist ways to evade Trump's Tariffs. Unfortunately this is a completely false reading of how nation-States operate. Increased brinkmanship by one country is quickly followed by brinkmanship from the other. What trump wants to do is play chicken with notions that are sacrosanct to the global postwar order. And if he was doing it for some greater goal, like a genuine opposition and desire to reform how the world operates, well, I can understand that. But Trump wants to put it all it risk for the sake of "better deals" because he lacks the brains and imagination to see the world as anything more complicated than a scaled-up luxury real estate market. And the country that will be most hurt by it is America. Because America is in a pretty great place (even if it is stagnant). Partially that's cause of its unparalleled army, of course. But perhaps more importantly it has overwhelming supplies of soft power. Can that soft power survive Trump - a man who is viewed with contempt by vast swathes of the population? A man that seems to think alliances and agreements are worthless without the providing of tribute? A man whose understanding of geopolitics is fundamentally mercantile? I'm really not sure.
The irony is, for a supposed strongman, if Trump is elected the only message that would be projected to the outside world is this: "America is insecure. And it is weak".
