Atossa Araxia Abrahamian
When Donald Trump looks at the globe, what does he see? We know that in the president’s eyes, other nations may be abject “shithole countries,” shiny real-estate opportunities, or potential candidates for the 51st state. There’s no question that people, goods, and ideas from other lands are less welcome in the United States than they once were. But for all his purported anti-globalism, Trump is no isolationist: Foreign states are still useful things. In his first few weeks in office, Trump has shown us how, in spite of its fixation on borders, the MAGA movement is embracing its own version of globalization.
Trump’s is not a politics of international cooperation and mutual support, as the cuts to USAID and digs against NATO make clear. Nor does he defer to corporate hegemony: He has no problem banning foreign businesses and threatening multinationals with tariffs. He seems to approach the world, rather, as a wily oligarch does—juggling offshore trusts, fictitious addresses, and numbered accounts to avoid taxes, litigation, and the rules and responsibilities that come with living in a society.
I’ve spent much of my career as a journalist reporting on the shadowy offshore world and its protagonists: the people who built it, the countries complicit in the system, the firms and oligarchs that profit from it, and the groups and individuals who get caught in the cracks. I recognize in Trump’s recent incursions a line of reasoning that I’ve encountered time and time again: that if you’re incredibly rich, cruel, or clever, the world can be your loophole.
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