On closing – The Economist:

‘Donald trump wants to use his second term to revolutionise America and its relationship with the world. He is engaged in an astonishingly wide range of international crises and negotiations, in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. It is perhaps the most intense bout of White House diplomacy for a generation. So it offers clues as to whether Mr Trump is as skilled a dealmaker as he says. The answer so far is that he is good at catalysing negotiations, but bad at closing them.
You cannot deny his ambition and energy. On May 6th he cut a deal with the Houthis. On May 10th he claimed credit for a ceasefire between India and Pakistan. A day later his envoy met Iranian officials to discuss a possible nuclear deal. On May 12th America and China declared a trade truce. Mr Trump is now in the Gulf, where he said he would lift sanctions on Syria and has met its leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, re-establishing relations after 25 years. Gaza is on the agenda. He has pushed Russia and Ukraine to meet for talks in Istanbul on May 15th.’

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‘Remarkably, the s&p 500 index has more than recouped its losses since his “liberation day” tariff-bomb exploded on April 2nd.
The problem is that after stoking crises, Mr Trump is seldom skilful enough to solve them. The deals he has notched up are narrow. His truce with China covers tariffs on goods but the trade war encompasses a far larger range of issues. A trade deal with Britain on May 8th was similarly thin. Details of the Houthi truce are murky, but it may cover only American ships, which account for a tiny share of container traffic heading through Houthi-menaced waters to the Suez canal. The Iran talks reportedly address nuclear enrichment but not missile technology or Iran’s support for militias abroad. So they appear no more expansive than the Obama-era deal that Mr Trump scrapped in 2018.’

(…)

‘By bowing too easily to Pakistan’s demands after its nuclear sabre-rattling and ignoring its tolerance of terrorism, America has created an incentive for India’s military to strike harder, faster next time. After backing down on his trade war, Mr Trump mumbled about an opportunity for “unification” with China, a remark the administration retracted but which spooked Taiwan.’

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‘Some of his dealmaking will succeed, but at the expense of fomenting broad and long-lasting instability. America and the world deserve a better deal than that.’

Read the article here.

Authoritarianism at home, business as more or less usual abroad.

The revolution has no children this time.

And the instability was already there. The desire to mitigate the effects of the instability had just disappeared.

The West was ready for something new. But alas, the new was not so new.