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News analysis
The president’s turnover of the economic order has unleashed changes that could prove lasting, because other countries will adjust.
Patricia Cohen, who is based in London, reports on about global economics.
April 28, 2025, 12:01 p.m. ET
President Trump has made clear his intent to smash the reigning global economic order. And in 100 days, he has made remarkable progress in accomplishing that goal.
Mr. Trump has provoked a trade war, scrapped treaties and suggested that Washington might not defend Europe. He is also dismantling the governmental infrastructure that has provided the know-how and experience.
The changes have been deep. But the world is still churning. Midterm elections in two years could erode the Republican majority in Congress. And Mr. Trump’s reign is constitutionally mandated to end in four years. Could the next president come in and undo what the Trump administration has done?
As Cardinal Michael Czerny, a close aide to Pope Francis, said of the Catholic Church: “There is nothing that we have done over 2,000 years that couldn’t be rolled back.”
The same could be said of global geopolitics. Yet even at this early stage, historians and political scientists agree that on some crucial counts, the changes wrought by Mr. Trump may be hard to reverse.
Like the erosion of trust in the United States, a resource that took generations to build.
“The MAGA base and JD Vance will still be around long after Trump’s gone,” said Ian Goldin, professor of globalization and development at the University of Oxford. No matter who next occupies the White House, the conditions that propelled the “Make America Great Again” movement — widening inequality and economic insecurity — remain. For the rest of the world, there is still a worry, he said, that there could be “another Trump in the future.”
