“Not the hero we deserve, but the hero we need,” is an immortal line from the Christopher Nolan classic The Dark Knight, where the city police commissioner talks about Batman.
Can we, shockingly, attribute those same lines to Donald Trump, as he completes one year in office tonight? Has he, against all sane predictions, been actually good for the US, and the world? Is the Don a harbinger of a new dawn (pun intended) for the world economy?
The answer is not that simple, though. Not as simple as his detractors at home and abroad—and there is of course no dearth of them—would have liked to, crucify him up there with the Anti-Christ and Adolf. And not as generous as his MAGA bhakts would have liked, to make the world believe that he is a white knight out to save America and the world from some dark times.
The truth perhaps lies somewhere in the grey zone between. Donald Trump’s second outing at the White House started exactly a year ago, on January 20, 2025, when he was inaugurated after a long and contentious poll campaign which saw anything from verbal vitriol to vicious assassination attempt and venomous narratives being peddled. Even then, no one had any inkling as to the extent of how much of a man on a mission the man was, especially considering his thinking that he could not do all that he wanted during his first presidency, nor the delusion that the 2020 elections were stolen from him.
That said, many expected more of the same from the 2017-2021 Trump-I era, with a lot of rabble rousing, some dire actions against immigrants and similar pet peeves of his support base, some climate denial and withdrawal of funds to UN bodies, but not much else.
How horribly wrong everyone was! While he set off on the expected lines launching his anti-immigrant drive right on Day One, it was what he did next, in less than 100 days into his second tenure, that had the globe in turmoil — a veritable 9/11 to the world order.
Trump’s tariff war, launched on April 2 which he grandiosely billed ‘Liberation Day’, was only the start of an upending of the post-Cold War ‘global village’ concept, where trade kept warring nations happy, interconnected and beyond the possibility of getting into nasty armed conflicts.
No sir, not on my watch, Trump seemed to say, as his tariff roller coaster set the world on edge, with India, where the Modi regime and its supporters had thought ‘Achche Din’ had come to India-US relations from his election, underwent a shock therapy of sorts. Forget all dreams of a half trillion trade between the two nations (as discussed when Modi met Trump a month into his presidency in February), India was left high and dry as the tariff attack came fast, swift and wavering — first 26 per cent, then 25 per cent, then 50 per cent and all this while threats of even higher ones, a 500 per cent if the Sanctioning Russia bill pass through into Bill.
Allies in Europe got their own shock therapy, as Trump openly dissed the NATO and talked of grabbing Greenland from NATO ally Denmark. Relations with the USA’s neighbours, Mexico and Canada, too, are at their lowest ebb.
And if this was what Trump did to ‘friends’, guess what his enemies had to suffer? When it came to Venezuela’s Maduro, he was captured from his bedroom and locked up in a US prison by daylight, while the mullahs in Iran are in an existential crisis.
365 days on, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. There are many who believe Trump has strengthened the United States strategically, militarily and economically against a backdrop of weakening of American superdominance over the past couple of decades and the ascendancy of China; that the tariffs were a necessary evil to stop China’s overwhelming control of the global supply chain, and that Greenland is but a strategic plus buffer move. By setting the cat amongst European nation-states, is Trump saving the world or setting it off on the fast track to World War III? The coming days and months will determine.
But what is easier is to determine whether he has been good for the economy, like he’s boasted. While it is easy to say he has ramrodded the global trade order, the long-term effects are yet to be evaluated. Could he just have made countries like India go in for reforms that they otherwise wouldn’t have? And if so, that wouldn’t be so bad, right?
Similarly, the answer is quite surprising when it comes to America domestically — the US economy has performed way, way better than expected, with a growth rate last quarter of 4.3 per cent, a high not seen for nearly three years. There is higher spending, from both the consumer side as well as investments (mainly in tech and military), which have acted like thrust boosters. And of course, the tariff tantrums have meant US exports have gone up while imports have decreased. This, along with many tariffs going up for many countries, meant duty receipts have also skyrocketed.
Quite a Nobel-like act on the economy front? But, not quite. Within the country, for all his tall talk, the tariff war still hasn’t managed to kickstart American manufacturing, nor reduce prices for some crucial essentials Trump vouched on during his campaign, right from food prices (eggs) to lowering fuel and electricity costs.
In fact, the American economic numbers, ironically similar to India in the post-Covid years, seem to be getting even more K-shaped, with one top segment doing really well — a classic example is the share market with its tech stocks performance, while the Bible Belt still awaits the saviour to deliver. What cause-and-effect will Year Two now bring is what America, and the world, is bracing for.
