The world is going through difficult times. The latest developments signal a turbulent process where global balances will be redefined, but economic balances are set to become much more fragile. In this respect, we should focus on the big picture rather than some fragments of it in order to be able to understand this turbulence.
THE U.K. is leaving the EU
For a long time, the U.K.’s exit from the EU has been occupying the agenda all over the world, especially in Europe. Actually, we consider this decision the U.K. made at a moment when the EU was in the process of expanding to become a leading global actor, as an outcome of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. Since with the 2008 economic crisis, the neo-liberal global system, which has been increasingly coming into question from that time on, failed to offer any solutions that bore fruit, which in turn led to many more questions about the future of the EU.
On the other hand, one of the most important strategies developed for the EU, which faced serious problems after the 2008 crisis, to find a way out of this conundrum was the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which could not have been signed then, and when Trump came to power, he made things even worse when he immediately canceled negotiations on TTIP. As a member of the union, the U.K. started to see the EU as a yoke around its neck and when the gap between the costs it has been enduring and the economic and social benefits of being a member of the union widened, it decided to set out on its own path.
The rejection of the Brexit deal Prime Minister May prepared by the British Parliament fueled the discussions. Because it is expected that a disorderly Brexit process without reaching an agreement with the EU would be much costlier.
Trump squares off with the globalists
Although it is not widely known, it can be seen after a little open source inquiry, the group that is defending Brexit in Britain and the important players in Trump’s election campaign are the same people. One of the most important common features of these groups is that they are against the “globalists”. Throughout Trump’s election campaign, one of the issues widely discussed was his struggle against the globalists. On the other hand, arguing that the U.S. economy was more harmed than it benefited from globalist policies, Trump signaled even before his election that he is going to practice a “protectionist” policy.
Therefore, in order to understand Trump’s relations with other countries it is necessary to consider promises Trump made during his presidential campaign and the statement he added to the strategy document after he got elected: “Economic security is national security.” We shouldn’t forget that these statements and Brexit are actually the byproduct of the same strategy.
Where will the trade wars end?
The trade war Trump started against China, the shelving of the TTIP agreement, the high tariffs imposed on other countries, and the sanctions he declared have been seen for a long time as the biggest threats to the global economy. Moreover, as a result of some decisions and statements Trump made, the notion of “economic wars” used by countries such as China, Russia and Iran is one of the best ways to describe the times we are living in. In this respect, as long as both Trump, the marginal president of the U.S., the country that championed neoliberal structures after the World War II, waging a war against globalization, and Xi Jinping the President of Communist China who advocated and praised globalization in his speech at last year’s Davos Economic Forum are in power, it seems that the economic wars will continue for a long time.
