‘As Trump Wrecks the Global Order, Big Business Must Decide Which Side It’s On’

One hundred and twenty five years ago, reclined on his Bloomsbury chaise longue in a smoking jacket, JM Keynes wrote about the last days of La Belle Epoque, a war-free period of unprecedented globalisation that occurred in Europe from 1870 to 1914.

 “The inhabitant of London,” he scribbled, “Could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth. And he regarded this state of affairs as normal, certain and permanent.”

Today Keynes would be forgiven for asking how much longer this easy state of affairs might be the case. Where, in the light of recent events, might he turn to order his Shein undies, his Uber Eats meal of ripe Peruvian mangoes and his aged Italian pecorino. Not to mention his cup of morning tea. 

Not long ago, the globalisation of our present age seemed a similarly inexorable force. We saw the fall of the Berlin Wall, a triumph of liberal democracy and shipping containers criss-crossing the world in their tens of millions. But like a pistol shot in 1914 Sarajevo, we’ve now had three volleys in the last half decade: Brexit, Covid and then Trump.

Populism feeds on discontent among those who perceive they are the have nots. They have been treated “unfairly.” Globalisation has worked for the poor in China, it has worked for the global super rich but this advance has come at the cost of people in the working population in advanced economies. And this failure to improve their standards of living is partly why populism and nativism arose.

Globalisation has not been a bad thing in terms of addressing inequality globally. We should care about the poor in the developing world but who is listening to them currently? Certainly not Trump who refers to most places he’s only vaguely aware of in the Global South as “shit holes” before imposing trade tariffs well above 50% on blameless countries like Laos and Cambodia. 

So, what Trump wants by reining in the forces of globalisation, putting up barriers, drawing up the migration ladder, is for each nation to go it alone both economically and from the point of view of defence. The problem with individual countries trying to focus on their own security and self-sufficiency is to forget the difficulty of going it alone as an individual country. That’s why we have NATO. 

Semiconductors is one obvious example where trade barriers cannot work but feature films are another. Mission Impossible – a service not a manufactured good – is “made” at multiple locations all over the world. And while you might be able to force some movie production back to the US, you aren’t about to re-start manufacturing cheap hammers, plastic brooms or swimming pool chlorine in the US rust belt. Nobody in their right mind will assign capital to that. The economics of scale just won’t work. Those who toil in Shenzhen sweat shops don’t have immensely expensive American healthcare insurance or take a mere day off from the production line each fortnight. 

We’re all now very intertwined and disengaging these supply chains is going to create a huge mess. Businesses cannot reliably plan or invest in a world where the occupant of the White House wakes up every morning with a new beautiful idea frequently contradicting his last beautiful idea. 

So, what does business do here in the UK? So far it has sat and watched, fearful of the consequences of overt, vocal protest. It mutters and lobbies behind safe, closed doors. Those who do not come forward meekly to kiss the Trumpian ring might suffer terrible consequences.

So will business really fall into line and deny the existence of issues like climate change? In an era marked by ideological divides and growing social tensions, how can businesses meaningfully engage with critical issues such as sustainability and geopolitics without becoming enmeshed in contentious extremes?

If these business are to fall into line and reject ‘diversity equity and inclusion’ as a mistaken, even worthless, idea then what are its employees likely to think? That they can never again believe their employer communicates with them honestly and authentically? That the last decade of talk about enlightened purpose and good corporate citizenship was all a PR con?

Too often, organisations are left with an unappealing choice between remaining silent or resorting to slogans, neither of which offers a sustainable path forward. Is there a more nuanced, pragmatic approach that allows businesses to balance social responsibility with commercial clarity?

Next month the organisation I work for, Jericho, will be holding a roundtable discussion which will examine the challenges and opportunities of navigating this terrain, particularly focusing on finding a “third way” between the most polarising political perspectives – from the fervour of populist agendas to the often ineffectual rhetoric of the “woke” movement. Can businesses effectively “get on with it” without risking alienation or backlash? And how do these pressures manifest differently across global markets?

Business must be aware of the dangers of operating in a world where sycophancy and obeisance rule. Nobody dare question the Emperor’s attire lest they are met with a petulant “off with his head” retort. In the States where an organisation like Harvard University dares to resist – and Harvard is a big big business with dry powder of a turnover of $7 billion and an endowment of $55 billion to draw on during its battle with the White House  – its university rivals are throttled by the threat of denial of federal funding.

The higher up you go and the closer you are to Trump the worse things are. Just witness the celebration of his First 100 days which showed a level of fawning lies and obsequiousness rarely seen outside a meeting of the North Korean politburo. It’s too bad Tom Wolff is no longer around to write about it.  Servility is the only thing that saves your skin.

Every business person worth her or his salt knows you cannot run anything enterprise for long along the brutal JFDI (Just F**king Do It) school of management. 

Edward Gibbon wrote in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: “The emperors, secure from contradiction, were abandoned to the intoxication of unlimited power, which their flatterers encouraged with the vilest servility.”

Democracy had long gone out of the window in Ancient Rome as its decline advanced.  Jack Posobiec is a close advisor to both Pete Hegseth and Scott Bessent, Trump cabinet members and was on the fateful February trip to Ukraine to meet Zelensky.

In 2024 Posobiec addressed the American Conservative Political Action Committee: “Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely. We didn’t get all the way there on January 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it.”

Meanwhile over in New York at the Kennedy Centre – towards which Trump has held a long and bitter grudge towards – he’s announced he will make the arts great again by staging a biblical pageant about the birth of Jesus. At the same time Trump has named his wife Melania’s former modelling agent, Paolo Zampolli, to the Kennedy board. If this isn’t a delicious parallel with the Emperor Nero making his horse a senator then I’m Spartacus.

Either way, I don’t think business can simply take this lying down like JM Keynes on his chaise longue.