From the end of the gold standard to Trump’s April 2 dismantling of the global free trade regime, the United States has never stopped imposing its own rules on the rest of the world.
For the second time in 54 years, the White House has shattered the global economic system — a system that the United States helped create, has always been central to, and had long guaranteed. On Aug. 15, 1971, President Richard Nixon ended the dollar’s convertibility into gold, which had been the cornerstone of the international monetary order since 1944. That decision was nothing short of a shockwave. It triggered runaway inflation, the oil crises of the 1970s, and, ultimately, the creation of the euro as Europe’s survival response to the dollar’s fluctuations.
Fast forward to April 2, 2025: President Donald Trump, wielding his exorbitant tariffs, has now upended the entire global free trade regime. And yet, the United States — with its sprawling offshore empire, the Big Tech giants (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft), and thousands of multinational firms — remains the biggest beneficiary of that very system.
One “small Southeast Asian country,” Vietnam, population 101.1 million…
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