Simon Nixon’s

Political
Economy

Trump’s Tariffs:
The World’s ‘Liz Truss Moment’

It is extraordinary to think that it is less than a decade since the UK chose to gamble its prosperity on the stability of the global rules-based trading system and America’s willingness to continue to underpin it.

Ahead of the EU Referendum, the Leave campaign gushed about unshackling ‘Global Britain’ from the European Union corpse. The Spectator celebrated Britain’s exit from the EU with a cover illustration of a butterfly with the headline “Out into the World”. To those who said that quitting the EU’s single market would be an act of national self-harm, Brexiters replied that Britain would prosper under World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules.

Even at the time, this looked naive.

There were already plenty of early warnings that the rules-based system was under strain. Russia had invaded Ukraine in 2014, provoking almost no Western response. Instead, President Barack Obama had signalled a waning of US interest in Europe with his pivot to Asia – itself a sign of emerging tensions with China.

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