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Is the West’s liberal template broken?

The framework of freedoms that has guided much of the world for the last 80 years is under threat. Free societies, free markets, and free trade have lost much of their luster in recent years, and Donald Trump’s inauguration this week might be the death knell of the whole project.

His strongman brand of rule is the envy of many political leaders around the world.

Why We Wrote This

Around the world, citizens are losing faith in the liberal international order, citing its failure to make them feel safer or better off. Does Donald Trump’s inauguration mark the end of the 80-year-old Western project?

And many voters, too, seem disillusioned. “Why does free trade matter, why does democracy matter,” they wonder, “if neither is making me or my family feel more secure or more prosperous?”

Liberal internationalism’s heyday, in the 1990s, saw rising standards of living, higher levels of health and education, and growing trade, while world poverty fell.

Yet its dark side soon became apparent. China reaped the giant’s share of the benefits, siphoning off jobs and profits from the West, and then the 2007 market crash, the COVID-19 pandemic, and Russia’s war in Ukraine proved a triple whammy.

Bankers and big-business executives in the West weathered the storm just fine. The rest, not so much. And that divide is making itself felt in today’s politics.

One day in the not too distant future, we may look back on Donald Trump’s return to power as the death knell of “liberal internationalism.” The belief that the world’s brightest future lay in a marriage of free countries, free societies, free markets, and free trade might turn out to be an idea whose time has passed.

Not just maybe. As things now stand, it’s very probable. And the stakes are high, not just for world trade but also for representative government in major democracies.

Whether we have indeed witnessed liberal internationalism’s last rites will ultimately depend on one question: whether its champions in those democracies are able to make a new and compelling case to increasingly skeptical electorates that it serves their interests.

Why We Wrote This

Around the world, citizens are losing faith in the liberal international order, citing its failure to make them feel safer or better off. Does Donald Trump’s inauguration mark the end of the 80-year-old Western project?

For now, that’s looking like a steep challenge.

President Trump has returned to lead the United States, still the world’s richest and most powerful country, with a starkly different vision. He is offering a can-do, strongman brand of rule; impatience with checks and balances on his power; a preference for tariffs over free trade; and the unilateral exercise of power abroad in the exclusive service of American interests.

And there are signs his approach is resonating in other Western democracies, where more voters are asking themselves, “Why does free trade matter – why does democracy matter – if neither is making me or my family feel more secure or more prosperous?”

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