What the Global South Gets Wrong About Trump

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Like a true “globalist”, stuck in Davos traffic, I watched Donald Trump’s inaugural address on my phone. One European executive, sharing a World Economic Forum shuttle bus with me, buried her head in her hands and lamented, “I can’t believe this is happening.”

But the response from delegates from the Middle East, Asia and Africa was very different. Many people from the Global South think (to use the troubling shorthand) that Trump is good news for them. The latest Voting In countries like India, Indonesia, South Africa and Brazil, this shows that Trump’s support extends beyond the elites of Davos.

The US president is seen outside the West as transactional, patronizing and a peacemaker. What’s not to like?

A lot, actually. Look beyond the name and there are many reasons why the Global South is so concerned about Trump’s America.

The US president is pushing to abandon the “rules-based international order” that has provided stability and open markets that have made China, India and much of Southeast Asia so prosperous over the past 30 years.

Tearing up those rules and moving into a fully commercialized world can seem refreshing. A world without law is one in which the strong prey on the weak – without any legal framework or principle restraining them. And most of the countries of the Global South are more likely to be hunters than hunters.

Panama, Colombia and Mexico are among the first countries to discover how inhospitable Trump’s world is. 80 percent of Mexico’s exports go to the United States. If Trump goes ahead with his threatened tariffs, it could push America’s southern neighbor into economic distress.

Of course, Mexico is not alone. Trump has threatened major trading nations around the world with tariffs. The notion that this doesn’t matter because the president is a “dealer” — and all his threats are simply a prelude to a deal — ignores the way he does business. International companies need stable and predictable legal systems if they are to have the confidence to invest across borders.

The evidence is that even when Trump makes a deal, there is no guarantee he will stick to it. During his first term, the US negotiated a new trade agreement with Canada and Mexico – known as the USMCA. But Trump is now asking for new concessions.

No trade agreement is secure if all agreements can be torn apart in response to some new grievance or to take advantage of a shift in the balance of power. As one former central banker put it to me at Davos: “The bottom line of that logic is to have safe trade within your own borders.”

Westerners may be shocked to see the president of the United States talking like a mafia boss about wanting more security money. But many American leaders in the Global South believe that they always act like gangsters, even if they talk like missionaries. At least Trump now says he’s abandoned his offensive morals. The hope is that a less hypocritical US will be easier to deal with, because it will not make demands that are not based on irrelevant Western values.

But we’re starting to see that America, which it so proudly claims, is useless to the outside world — and it’s not pretty. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has announced the suspension of almost all US aid programs. Only those that directly benefit Americans will be renewed. It can stop such programs PepperIt provides drugs to fight HIV and AIDS and has saved millions of lives around the world.

Trump, for his part, seems to have accidentally supported the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. That could be devastating news for Palestinians who will lose their homeland – and it will also shock Jordan and Egypt, which are slated to take in the new refugees.

The US is certainly not willing to settle for anyone. The poem on the Statue of Liberty reads: “Give me your weak, your poor . . . The poor man of your shore refused. But, to put it mildly, this is not the mood of Trump’s America, where the president’s supporters wave banners calling for “mass deportations now.” Refugee resettlement programs already existed in America. Banned.

Reducing legal immigration from what Trump once described as “dangerous countries” may sound like good policy to many Americans. But it doesn’t bode well for the middle classes of the global South, as expensive visas are harder to come by for skilled migrants or students.

Still, perhaps if Trump makes good on his promise to end wars around the world, all trade, aid and immigration concerns will be put to rest. However, the president’s desire to be an international peacemaker is difficult to reconcile with his declared desire to expand America’s empire.

If there is one idea that the countries of the Global South all say they reject, it is imperialism. If Trump is serious and genuine about his plans to expand America’s borders, their applause for him could quickly fade.

gidon.rachman@ft.com