Trump's tariffs are wrong on so many levels it's hard to even encapsulate. But it's increasingly clear that they have fractured the tenuous relationships between many western (and other) nations, and weakened both the United States and its links with the rest of the world.
Who better, then, to take advantage of this unexpected geopolitical windfall than President Xi of China. No fool, Xi has been busy making hay while Trump has been busy making a fool of himself. A big part of that Chinese initiative is happening right now at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Tianjin, China.
Guests of honour at the meeting are Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and President Vladimir Putin of Russia, who, together with Xi, make an unholy trifecta of miscreants and renegades. But, let's remember, powerful miscreants and renegades.
Trump's actions have pushed these unsavoury characters further and further into each others' orbits and interdependencies. They are already interconnected through the BRICS and BRICS+ groupings, but Trump's scattershot actions against the three can only serve to further cement their relationship, to the potential peril of the entire world.
China's spectacular military parade, marking the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two, in front of Putin, Kim Jong Un and over two dozen other heads of state, only adds insult to injury, and certainly puts Trump's own recent military parade in a lot of shade.
The global order is tilting alarmingly. All thanks to Donald Trump.
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