Your new research paper is ‘Saving global economic governance from the ‘Trump shock’’. What is the ‘Trump shock’?
Up until recently, the United States and other advanced economies were largely in consensus on the benefit of international rules and had a long history of collaborating to tackle global problems. But since January 2025, President Trump’s approach on trade is no longer about achieving mutual benefits through a rules‑based system but rather extracting as much value as possible from other countries. At the same time, the US has withdrawn, more or less, from supporting a wide range of global public goods, including the pursuit of net zero, energy security and financial stability.
Many hoped that this was just for the Trump presidency period, but in my view, this is a fundamental shift in US policy. Trump may be succeeded by another Republican and the Democrats are also highly sceptical about the benefits of free trade. It would be hard for them to roll back many of Trump’s policies even where they wanted to.
What’s the solution?
Some think that countries have no choice but to ally themselves with either the US or with China. Others, such as Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister, argue that the so‑called ‘middle powers’ must work together in coalitions designed on an issue‑by‑issue basis. Instead, the argument this paper makes is that you need a new, permanent ‘third’ economic pole, without the US or China, built by countries in favour of a rules‑based approach to the global economy, the provision of global public goods and cooperation to achieve mutual benefit.