It has been fourteen months since Donald Trump returned to the White House. In that time, he has started wars in at least seven countries, threatened to annex three sovereign territories, triggered what economists are calling the worst energy crisis since the 1970s, and imposed tariffs that the OECD says are dragging the entire global economy into the ground.
And he’s only in year two.
Whatever your politics, it is impossible to look at the last fourteen months and describe them as anything other than a controlled demolition of the world order. So let’s go through it, methodically, with receipts.
The Wars Nobody Voted For
Wars of choice, at home and abroad, have become the defining feature of Trump’s tumultuous second term. From Minneapolis and Los Angeles to Caracas and Tehran, instigating conflicts with perceived adversaries has become his principal means of pursuing domestic and international goals.
He has deployed military forces in Iran, Venezuela, and at least five other countries.
That is, at least seven military engagements. In fourteen months.
The Iran war, launched on February 28 alongside Israel, is the centrepiece. When pressed on civilian casualties, including a bombing that killed over 165 people, mostly children, Trump’s response was characteristically casual: “Like I said, some people will die. When you go to war, some people will die.”
Washington-based political analyst Osama Abu Irshaid put it plainly: “Trump is not building a coalition; he is alienating allies. He points to a pattern of extortion extending from tariffs on the European Union to attempts to buy Greenland.”
And the economic fallout from the Iran war alone? Crude oil surged to $110 a barrel, nearly 50 percent higher than before the war, prompting the Wall Street Journal to argue that the conflict is unleashing the most severe energy crisis since the 1970s.
The Tariffs: A “Perfect Stagflation Machine”
Before the Iran war, Trump’s signature second-term economic move was tariffs. He called them “the greatest thing ever invented.” Virtually no experts agreed, projecting that Trump’s tariffs would raise inflation, cut wages, impose an additional drag on US manufacturers, and weaken the stock market.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, Columbia University professor, former World Bank chief economist, former chair of President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers, was blunt, stating, “Virtually all economists think that the impact of the tariffs will be very bad for America and for the world. They will almost surely be inflationary.”
He went further in a CNBC interview, saying, “Not great right now, and the prospects are that it’s going to get worse.”
Fellow Nobel laureate Paul Krugman didn’t hold back either.
Krugman said, “The tariffs Trump announced were higher than almost anyone expected. This is a much bigger shock to the economy than the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930, especially when you bear in mind that international trade is about three times as important now as it was then.
The size of the tariffs, however, wasn’t the only shocking thing about the Rose Garden announcement.
Arguably what we learned about how the Trump team arrived at those tariff rates, the sheer malignant stupidity of the whole thing, was even worse.”
Mark Zandi, Chief Economist at Moody’s Analytics, was equally devastating: “This will weigh heavily on the U.S. and global economies and likely result in a recession. To what end?
There will be no boost to investment in the U.S. The trade deficit will be no smaller. And there won’t be any reliable increase in government revenues.
It is impossible to fathom why the world is being put through all this unnecessary drama.”
The OECD projects US GDP growth will slow to nearly half its 2024 pace, falling from 2.8% to just 1.5% in 2026. Global growth as a whole is expected to drop below 3% for the first time since 2020.
Read More: How Has Trump’s Family Wealth Boomed After Being Re-Elected As US President?
The Inflation Nobody Saw Coming: But Everyone Is Now Paying
Tariffs are a tax on imports, and that tax doesn’t stay with the government. It gets passed directly to consumers at the checkout.
Economist Joseph Stiglitz laid out exactly what’s happening: “The tariffs are paid by Americans. They’re not paid by the foreigners. If we compare where inflation would have been with where we are today, it is estimated that the average family is paying somewhere between $1,000 and $1,700 in extra money because of the tariffs. Manufacturing jobs are down in the United States in 2025, when they were up under President Biden.”
On the timing, Stiglitz was especially sharp: “Tariffs are paid by American citizens. They increase the price, they increase inflation. And the timing couldn’t be worse because we’re just getting over an inflationary episode. And to put this inflationary pressure back on, it’s really crazy.”
Krugman identified the thing that makes this uniquely damaging, the uncertainty itself: “An unpredictable tariff rate that can change the next day is really a depressing effect on demand. And that’s clear for business investment, but it also affects consumers. It affects homebuilders. So the uncertainty is the reason why a recession seems likely.”
“The thing that’s extra damaging now is the craziness. Nobody knows what the tariff rates will be in six months. Businesses making investment decisions want to know what things are going to be like over the next five years, but nobody has the faintest idea,” Krugman warned.
Mark Zandi spelt out what that means for prices specifically: “The increase in tariffs in 2025 added over half a percentage point to consumer price inflation. If you want to get that inflation back down to something we can all feel comfortable with, closer to the Federal Reserve’s 2% target, you’d have to get rid of those tariffs.”
The inflationary impact of tariffs is regressive; the bottom 10% of US households are expected to see their disposable income reduced by an estimated 3.5 percentage points. The people who can least afford it are paying the most.
The Land Grabs: Yes, This Is Actually Happening
Since Trump was sworn in, he has threatened to annex Greenland, strained traditional alliances with Europe, undermined the United Nations, and rattled international trade with sweeping tariffs, all within his first year.
On Greenland, the international legal community’s response was unequivocal.
Thomas Crosbie, a US military expert at the Royal Danish Defence College, stated that any attempt to seize Greenland “would constitute a criminal act, and Denmark, with the backing of its allies, would have the legal right to arrest any Americans involved and prosecute them under Danish criminal law.”
The geopolitical irony is almost poetic. Arne Bård Dalhaug, former head of the NATO Defence College, warned that Trump’s threats “come across as a gift-wrapped present from Trump to Putin, allowing him free hands in Eastern Europe.”
Foreign Policy delivered the most damning verdict on Trump’s resource grab strategy: “The biggest problem with Trump’s resource grabs is not their lack of economic foundation, which is nil, or their legality, which is none, but with what they do for US security, which is little or worse. Gunboat diplomacy is back — only this time without the diplomacy.”
Image Credits: Google Images
Sources: The Economic Times, The Indian Express, The Guardian
Find the blogger: @chirali_08
This post is tagged under: Trump, Geopolitics, Global politics, Global security, global tensions, International Relations, Iran US fight, Iran war, us iran, us Iran attack, us iran israel war, War, world politics, world war, world war 3, world war three, Chinese professor US Iran war, China Nostradamus, trump denmark, trump greenland, US, us denmark, us trump greenland, us india tariff, trump, trump tariff, trump tariff india, us india, us india relationship
Disclaimer: We do not own any rights or copyrights to the images used; these images have been sourced from Google. If you require credits or wish to request removal, please contact us via email.
Other Recommendations:
Iran Is Beating US Even At The Meme And Roasting Game: Here’s How
