1 week Ago By Patrick Cockburn
This is Dispatches with Patrick Cockburn, a subscriber-only newsletter from i. If you’d like to get this direct to your inbox, every single week, you can sign up here.In a famous scene in Charlie Chaplin’s film The Great Dictator, released in 1940, the dictator played by Chaplin toys with a large balloon in the shape of the globe.
He spins it on his finger and bounces it on his head – until it explodes, and he looks down in surprise at the shreds of rubber.In the days since President Donald Trump declared his trade war on the rest of the world in the Rose Garden of the White House, he has behaved much like Chaplin playing with his global balloon. What Chaplin showed symbolically is happening in actuality with Trump: the future of billions of people is being determined with demonic frivolity by an ill-informed and unpredictable egomaniac.
In the Rose Garden, Trump announced tariffs which, even during the 90-day pause in the “reciprocal” tariffs, will add 10 per cent to all US imports. It will, according to the Budget Lab at Yale University, cost the average American household an extra $4,700 a year in increased prices.if(window.
adverts) { window.adverts.addToArray({"pos": "inread-hb-ros-inews"}); }The tariffs are in effect a sales tax on the American consumer which is likely to tip the US economy into recession in the next six months, unless increased government revenues are immediately spent on lower taxes.
Since these are likely to benefit the better off, the poorer half of America’s highly unequal society face a sharp deterioration in their standard of living.Arbitrary decisionsThe botched and much-mocked kindergarten calculations that produced Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs on countries around the world were the fruit of an unembarrassed amateurism, underlining a contempt for what other people think or feel that is the hallmark of dictatorships everywhere. “The problem is that the only safe thing for senior advisers to do is to agree with the boss,” a highly informed Soviet diplomat in Baghdad told me in 1990 when I asked him why Saddam Hussein had taken the disastrous decision to invade Kuwait.
The same arbitrary approach was reflected in Trump’s decisions both to introduce the additional tariffs and to then pause them on Wednesday in order to avert a spiralling financial panic, as the price of US government bonds plummeted. His advisers reportedly only learned of his U-turn at the last minute and were left trying to spin it as part of a well-planned strategy – only for Trump himself to admit later in the day that he had retreated because of the financial market turmoil.if(window.
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adverts) { window.adverts.addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l1"}); }As shock has succeeded shock over the last 10 days, many people, including Trump-backing oligarchs, have realised too late that he is turning the United States into Magaland.
Titans of Wall Street and Silicon Valley, previously confident that Trump would stick to the old Republican mantra of deregulation and lower taxes, whatever his populist blather about tariff walls and reindustrialisation, found that they had mistaken their man.If they were talking to safely conservative “grown-ups” in the White House, these were not the ones calling the shots. Soon US television screens were filled with outraged business and political panjandrums denouncing Trump’s tariffs as the greatest act of economic self-harm in US history.
More losers than winnersGlobalisation was already badly battered by political and economic storms and has now ended with a thump. More concretely, the model of export-led economic expansion – the great exponents of which are China, Germany and a host of South East Asian countries – has been holed below the water line.Whatever happens to Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs, the basic 10 per cent tariff on all US imports appears to be non-negotiable and will be the biggest tax increase in US history.
Critics of Trump have been quick to highlight the hypocrisy of this, given that the rising cost of living under President Joe Biden was – along with immigration – the issue which did most to persuade US voters to send Trump back to the White House. As for the trade war with China, such conflicts seldom produce swift or decisive results even when a country is the target of an international embargo or sanctions. A recent example of this is the failure of Western sanctions on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
A vast country like Russia will never run out of natural resources and quickly found customers for its oil exports, while domestic production substituted for sanctioned imports.Paradoxically, Russia may now suffer serious collateral damage as an indirect result of “liberation day”, because fear of a world recession provoked by Trump’s action has already led to a steep fall in the price of crude oil. if(window.
adverts) { window.adverts.addToArray({"pos": "mpu_mobile_l2"}); }if(window.
adverts) { window.adverts.addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l2"}); }But the Russians are scarcely alone in this, since the Trump-inspired US economic offensive has already produced a general mood of uncertainty, as the price of US government bonds and the dollar continued to fall on Friday morning.
China was ready for TrumpChina is not only a tougher nut than Russia, but it has been preparing for just such a confrontation with the US since the last Trump administration. Beijing may well feel that, if a confrontation with the US is inevitable, it would prefer this to happen under Trump because of his ramshackle approach and ultimate willingness to do a deal. No future American leader is likely to be so ill-equipped to form an anti-China coalition, given the distrust and suspicion with which he is regarded by former US allies.
These may stay uneasily in the American camp, but seek to avoid being dragged into an escalating conflict with China.Yet, easy though it is to point out Trump’s failings, it is important to keep in mind that the raw political, military and economic power of the US remains vast. Moreover, Trump won the presidency a second time because his opponents repeatedly underestimated him.
“He is a cunning nutter,” as one of his former aides once said, but political elites at home and abroad have continued to underestimate both his cunning – his instinctive and devastating political skills – and the extreme nuttiness that has led him to make what looks like the mother of all mistakes by declaring economic war on the rest of the world.Any assessment of Trump’s strengths must take into account the inadequacy of his opponents, exemplified by the feebleness of successive Democratic Party presidential candidates. But much the same could be said of European leaders, who hold ceaseless meetings but have yet to agree a feasible plan either to win or to end the war in Ukraine as a serious alternative to Trump’s ceasefire talks with Russia.
European leaders are equally unlikely to rise to the challenges posed by “liberation day’” any more effectually than they did during the Ukraine crisis. A common feature here may be that the political establishments in both the US and Europe are so wedded to neo-liberalism – at the centre of which were free trade and free immigration – that they cannot cope with a deglobalising world in which old alliances are being abandoned.if(window.
adverts) { window.adverts.addToArray({"pos": "mpu_mobile_l3"}); }if(window.
adverts) { window.adverts.addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l3"}); }In theory, the EU, China and other states might set up their own free trade area separate from the US, which only has 13 per cent of the global goods trade, but such a radical initiative looks unlikely to emerge from the baffled European elites.
Trump is a gambler who has so far got lucky, but, like Charlie Chaplin’s dictator, is now making bets that will damage everybody in the world.Further Thoughts A dozen years ago, I attended an institutional dinner at a university in the UK. I cannot recall just why I was there since this is not the sort of event I normally enjoy, but I do remember being surprised that all of the other diners, sitting opposite and on either side of me, were members of the university administration and not a single one was a member of the academic staff of the university.
I did not realise this at the time, but what I was seeing that night was the result of administrative or bureaucratic bloat at British and American universities, for which a high price is now being paid. I do not know what the figures are for the UK, but over the last half century the number of administrative staff at US universities has grown to exceed the number of academics. When times are hard it is the latter who are culled by university bosses whose experience is frequently in business and not in academia.
Courses available are cut back and students treated as customers who must not be deterred by poor exam results, while original research work is at a discount.Turning British universities into businesses has gone a fair way towards degrading the entire system, once among the finest in the world. Making a bad situation worse, many of those put in charge turned out to be not very good at business, spending money they did not have in the expectation of revenue that never came, which is why so many are now facing bankruptcy or heavy cuts in their academic staff.
At one university in deep financial trouble, I know that money was being spent on building new tennis courts rather than on lecture theatres, in a desperate bid to attract more fee-paying students from abroad who pay three times the £9,525 maximum tuition fee for UK students.It has somehow come to be regarded as normal rather than bizarre that British universities should depend on recruiting students from China, India and Nigeria. For the most part, these students are recruited by agencies, making the universities depend on them.
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addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l4"}); }Though vice-chancellors vigorously deny that they reduce their academic standards to give places to high-fee-paying foreign students, this is simply not the case. An academic friend told me how his department had been about to fail 90 Chinese students with inadequate language skills, when university administrators pleaded with them not to do so because this would lead the recruitment agencies to boycott them and the university losing millions in tuition fees. My friend admitted that the department had shamefacedly decided to give the Chinese students a pass.
There is an excellent BBC File on 4 Investigates documentary – The International Student Scandal – describing the damaging consequences of this over-reliance on foreign students.A vice-chancellor at one university told me sarcastically last year that he did not think the Government would do anything to repair university finances “until MPs find that their children cannot get places at a university because they have all gone to foreigners paying higher fees”.Beneath the Radar I think that the debate about legalising or decriminalising cannabis tends to obscure the need to inform users about the risk of schizophrenia.
In 2012, I wrote a piece hopefully suggesting that cannabis might have reached its “tobacco moment”. I suggested a parallel between the moment in the 1950s and 1960s when people began to accept copious scientific evidence that cigarette smoking led to lung cancer, and equally compelling evidence becoming available since 2010 that smoking cannabis leads to schizophrenia.I was over-optimistic, and popular understanding of the risks involved for the 2.
5 million people taking cannabis in Britain over the last year has lagged behind proof of its toxicity. One expert survey of the evidence says that research “has consistently found that cannabis use is associated with schizophrenia outcomes later in life”.Sir Robin Murray, professor of psychiatric research at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, said that studies show that “if the risk of schizophrenia for the general population is about one per cent, the evidence is that, if you take ordinary cannabis, it is two per cent; if you smoke regularly you might push it up to four per cent; and if you smoke ‘skunk’ every day you push it up to eight per cent”.
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addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l5"}); }The great majority of those taking cannabis suffer no ill effects and may regard warnings about the drug’s dangers as exaggerated and alarmist.Now interesting new research from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London shows that cannabis users’ risk of developing psychotic disorders reverts to the normal level 37 weeks after they stop using it. This is good news, but underlines the danger of consuming cannabis.
“Ex-users who had only recently stopped (between one and four weeks) had nearly a seven-fold increase in the likelihood of developing psychosis compared to never-users,” reads the report. “After five to 12 weeks the risk for psychotic disorders dropped to a three-fold increase compared to those who had never used cannabis.” Cockburn’s Picks In the torrent of commentary about President Donald Trump’s “liberation day”, I found this interview with Anatole Kaletsky and Wolfgang Munchau on UnHerd to be the best-informed and insightful.
Patrick Cockburn has written a series of essays, illustrated by his son Henry, about the state of the UK. You can read his dispatch from Canterbury here; Dover here; Newcastle here; Herefordshire here; Salford here; and Barrow-in- Furness here. Patrick has also written an essay about the gig economy, which you can read here.
