Trumpism as Delayed Reaction to the Success of Export-Oriented Growth in the Global South

By Ooi Kee Beng

A shorter version published on 13 April 2025 by South China Morning Post as “Decoding Trump’ s tariffs and the world’s multipolar future” can be read at South China Morning Post, 13 Apr 2025: https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3306221/decoding-trumps-tariffs-and-worlds-multipolar-future?display=plus

Perhaps what the world is missing in trying to make head or tail of Trump’s tariff war, is the nature of power discourses. Where global hegemons are concerned, when things go their way, the discourse is positive, inclusive and progressive. When the odds are against them, we get fighting words; we get negative descriptions of the challenges they face, and the enemies they perceive.

Thus, when the British Empire collapsed, the damage control, among other things, was to group all its former colonies into an image of consensus and hierarchy nicely termed The British Commonwealth.

In more recent times, we have had strategic discourses serving American hegemony framed by terms that are more connotative than informative, such as “the rule-based international system” (suggesting fair multilateralism in the world), “free and open Indo-Pacific” (in contrast to a maligned Chinese system of trade, not to mention the conceptual encirclement of China) “Liberal Democracy” (ideologically differentiating Western superiority over all other models by definition), “Global stability” (highlighting the hegemon’s inescapable role in bringing peace and order), “Economic prosperity” (the goals for all humanity being best guaranteed by the present hegemonic system), “Defending human rights” (legitimation for interventions), or “Alliance of Democracies” (contrasting all others as ‘authoritarian’ by nature).

Mirroring this on the minus side, we have other terms, equally suggestive but aimed at spelling out supposed threats to the hegemonic system, and rallying allies against challenges to the hegemon. Certain terms thus come into popular use, such as “Authoritarian threats”, “Economic decoupling”, “Global fragmentation”, “Democracy in decline”, “Disinformation”, Supply chain vulnerabilities”, and the catch-all for crisis of all types, “Unprecedented challenges”.

By keeping an analytical eye on the discourse-generating nature of systemic global power, we should be able to reveal the historical context within which the present tariff war is occurring, and discard as many as possible of the connotations that are meant to confuse and mislead.

International Development 101

In high schools and colleges over the last few decades, the wisdom taught to all willing listeners has been that developed countries went through a definite process in modern economic growth. This involved industrialization and urbanization happening hand in glove. The next stage happens when the factories and the infrastructure are in place; the economy then begins to move away from manufacturing towards the services sector, largely backed by a strong financial sector based on professional services, stock markets and currency trading. Logically, that was the path all postcolonial countries were to take, more or less, if they were to copy the developed countries.

Among postcolonial polities and countries founded after WWII as part and parcel of the damage-control strategies of the developed world, and who were born within the overwhelming tensions of the Cold War, the easiest path for them to conceive of, and to sell domestically was “Import substitution”. To have some control over the flow of wealth across its borders, it seemed obvious that they should stop buying from outside; instead, they should start producing domestically.

This quickly turned out to be the wrong move. In most cases, the expertise and infrastructure needed for developing the necessary manufacturing skills were in most cases simply not there. So they ended up producing bad products with great wastage of time and resources.

This mistake was soon rectified by the new wisdom that these countries should go into export-oriented development. Instead of slowing the worth of imports, they could increase the worth of exports instead. But lacking the abovementioned resources, this meant a great dependence on expertise and investments from outside—largely from the developed countries or the former colonial masters.

Independence was not going to be an easy process. The inter-connectivity between the rich world and the developing world could not be broken, only reformatted at best. Some countries that tried for a clean break were those relying on ideological socialism, meaning communism. That, as we know, failed.

The inter-connectivity just could not be cut. Any attempt just turned into a conflict of economic systems, which the Communist bloc lost by 1991.

What we do see in the case of China, was the shift under Deng Xiaoping from economic isolationism to “reforms and opening up”. This amounted to China following, rather belatedly, the path already undertaken by countries outside the communist bloc. With its entry into the WTO in 2001, the influence of its size, its political focus, and its willingness to risk widespread corruption, environmental decay and income disparities, aided by the greed of global capitalists to make gigantic profits off Chinese factories and markets, China’s export-oriented trajectory, delayed as it was, went so steeply upwards that within two or three decades the country has become the powerhouse for manufacturing in the world, bar none.

Import-orientation in the G7

What sustained export-orientation meant was of course that western markets, especially the American one, became the importer of relatively cheap and abundant goods. Excessive levels of import and overconsumption of all types of goods were bound to occur sooner or later in those markets.

The edge that western powers now has left are in military power and technological prowess, which most easily explains the queer Chip War breaking out in recent years. To be sure, they have also retained control over the rule-making and the financial system, which of course has been a key advantage for them; the BRICS and other initiatives are a challenge to this source of global power being held by the West.

It is in this context that the term “Global South” has emerged so vibrantly from Cold War discourses. The broad success of foreign FDIs and export-orientation in postcolonial nations has now led to a point where the obvious structure for global inter-connectivity to aim for is multipolarity. Actually, multi-anything—multilateralism, multiculturalism, and the opening of markets. It is a brave new world we now live in.

Economic globalization has been successful—albeit shown to have been somewhat excessive during the Covid epidemic; that has led post-pandemic to a wish among most countries to retreat a step or two, and adopt more localized or regionalized supply chain structures.

What we are now seeing in the Trump White House is the hegemonic reaction of the biggest import market to the half-century-old export-oriented economic policies of the rest of the world, including the G7 (minus the USA). One could say this American reaction had been delayed by other distractions. Policing the world and being hegemon is no easy job. Fighting Reds, waging proxy wars, conducting a War on Terror, supporting an unpopular Israel; how would one manage this without a Deep State to provide continuity?

Being delayed until the coming of Trump 1 and Trump 2, this reaction appears all the more dramatic, destructive and risky. Fighting any developed ailment, fighting cancer for example at Stage 4 is not only a difficult battle, it requires deep surgery. Tariffs are clearly for the purpose of slowing or stopping imports, in effect a counter-move to the export-oriented growth of most of the world over recent decades. Stopping Stage-4 cancer cells from growing, as it were.

Most paradoxically, the USA is now considering import-substitution as the path out of the dilemma of being much more of a consumer than producer. Just like what newly-formed countries post-WWII had to do.

But is there really a sickness here that needs remedying? And what is its nature?

In a sense, we can see it as a continuation of decolonization. We can also see it as late-stage capitalism. We can also see it as the final act in a struggle between the principle of equality expressed by the United Nations’ General Assembly and the reality of power expressed in the existence of the Security Council.

One other potent review of the American self-victimisation expressed so clearly by Trump, is to understand that the USA’s nation-building—actually continent-building—process was sidelined by European wars in the 20^th century. Tempted by the possibility of world hegemony, and startled that its Enlightenment ideals were being threatened by Soviet Communism, the USA decided to become the world hegemon, instead of staying on course and staying true to its destiny of becoming an enviable model of liberalism and democracy for the world.

Datuk Dr Ooi Kee Beng is the Executive Director of Penang Institute, and Senior Visiting Fellow at ISEAS — Yusof Ishak Institute. He is the award-winning author of The Reluctant Politician: The Life and Time of Tun Dr Ismail (ISEAS 2007), founder-editor of Penang Monthly and ISEAS Perspective. His most impactful books include In Lieu of Ideology: An Intellectual Biography of Goh Keng Swee, andThe Eurasian Core: Dialogues with Wang Gungwu on the History of the World (ISEAS 2016). Web page: wikibeng.com