Will a diminishing inter-dependence between countries lead to new security and peace – or does isolationism create new dangers? Economics expert Ben Chu, formerly of BBC’s Newsnight and The Independent, brings that discussion, and his fascinating new book ‘Exile Economics’, to this year’s festival. Here, he gives us an exclusive extract
The election of Donald Trump in 2024 on a platform of massive protectionism and rampant economic nationalism is the most profound challenge to the post-1945 global economic order imaginable. The direct economic effects of a new fortress of American trade barriers would be deeply damaging for the US and the world. But the indirect effects – the likelihood of tariff retaliation by other states in Asia, Europe, Latin America and Africa – would greatly compound that damage. And the negative impact of the linchpin of the post-Second World War trade system disintegrating is hard to fathom. At the time of writing, in the immediate wake of Trump’s re-election, it is impossible to know for sure where his second presidency will lead and just how deep it will plunge into exile economics. But there is no reason to believe that he will not attempt to pick up where he left off in his first term and deliver what he promised on the 2024 campaign trail. And there is surely no reason to think that the prescient warning of [a] legion of experts to President Herbert Hoover in 1930 that ‘a tariff war does not furnish good soil for the growth of world peace’ is any less relevant in 2025.
In the wake of the Second World War the great St Lucian economist Sir Arthur Lewis looked back on the confusion and policy failure of the 1920s and 1930s and came to a stark conclusion: ‘Without international cooperation we are lost . . . Nations cannot prosper in isolation.’ He went on: ‘Each generation looks contemptuously on the failures of its predecessors; it is for ours to show that it can learn also from their mistakes.’ It is a challenge for our generation too. The fundamental question that we all should be asking –and we all have a stake in the outcome – is: what really maximises the chances of us achieving long-term security and prosperity. Is it a groping for self-sufficiency or rather an embrace of interdependence?
Ben Chu discusses ‘Exile Economics’ at 3pm on 29th June
