The world is bracing for the impact of U.S. President Donald Trump's impending "America first" agenda, which is unsettling and risks unraveling the open rules-based order that has enabled unprecedented prosperity across the world for the past seven decades. The narrow nationalism and protectionism promised in Trump's inaugural speech offered less a vision of the future than a hallucinatory view of America.
If Trump implements proposed import tariffs, it could at worst unravel a globalized economy and plunge us into a headlong rush back to the 1930s -- a world of protectionist beggar-thy-neighbor policies. At best, it would create great uncertainty and destabilize markets as China, Mexico and the European Union retaliate.
