Week signals: Basic instinct
Plus: watch points for Europe, Canada, Australia, Singapore, and Trinidad.
This week:
IN REVIEW. Grand theft authoritarianism, circumstantial evidence, and hypothetical survival strategies.
UP AHEAD. The Trumps go to Europe, plus elections in Canada, Australia, Singapore, and Trinidad & Tobago.
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The Week in Review: Business, at pleasure
The week began with Donald Trump threatening central bank independence and third-country trading ties. It ended with the president not only backing down on both, but claiming to have received a phone call from Xi Jinping (denied) plus "200 deals" (unlikely). In between, much of the world paused for Easter, Pope Francis passed away, talks reached an inflection on Ukraine and Russia, and war threatened to break out between India and Pakistan.
Heading into Trump's 100th day this week, political analysts are readying to distil what's been a unique time in US and world history, to put it mildly, and unpack the themes, drivers and directions for the next 1,361 days.
Not us. While we’re certainly working with clients on scenarios and strategies, we're increasingly leaning towards the idea that there’s less rhyme or reason to this administration, than mere sound and fury. Trump certainly has established aims, and, to give him his due, he’s certainly delivering on them. But the inherent contradictions and tensions between these, as well as within his team, suggests there's no higher purpose, or at least any realistic one.
On debt and government spending, we've seen DOGE crash and burn. On bringing peace to the world's conflicts, we've seen alliance disruption and the beginnings of an arms race. On making America richer, we've seen market declines, a spike in uncertainty, and predictions of a recession. Hardening the border seems to have worked, but at the expense of tourism, US education exports, and the relationship between the executive and the courts.
Seeking to divine a strategy through all this, many have come up with increasingly complex theories. In Ukraine, a reverse-Nixon. On the economy, a Mar-a-Lago Accord. But the reality is less 3D chess than 3D chaos. Our rule of thumb here is Hanlon's razor: never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. But if there's one grand conspiracy theory that’s held up, or at least not been completely overruled by the evidence, it’s the idea long proposed by many on the American left: that Trump isn't playing 3D chess but 3D theft. In heuristic terms, let's call it Putin's razor: never attribute to public interest that which is adequately explained by personal interest.
Stressing that this isn’t our base case – we don’t consider the administration sufficiently sophisticated or the US sufficiently broken for kleptocracy to work – it’s still worth considering even if it’s only a 10% possibility. Kleptocracies aren’t just a recuring feature of history, in much of the world they’re the most basic form of government. Whether in the form of tyranny (rule by one) or oligarchy (rule by elites), putting yourself first is not only common in leadership, but surprisingly durable. And while revolution and tyrannicide can interrupt it – as the Athenians found after the 6th century BC – liberal democracy is a delicate bud, always vulnerable to rapacious interests and predatory elites.
Returning to Trump, and to explore this theory further, what is the evidence of a grand kleptocratic project, should we be worried, and what can we do to protect ourselves?
First, unlike Pete Hegseth, Trump may be voluble on Twitter but he keeps his Signal chats to himself. There’s unlikely