What if the rest of the world just says f*** you to Trump?

(image: reve.art)

I do not follow Norwegian anything, other than a good TV series I saw recently. I do follow US tariffs, because it is big and important news for everyone. But then I saw this from Harald Magnus Andreassen, Chief Economist of the Norwegian investment bank Sparebank 1 Markets, which Google kindly translated for me:

"A scenario is that the rest of the world just says 'fuck you' to the United States. Trade with the United States is not very crucial to countries other than Mexico and Canada."

For those of you who have become bored with tariff discussions or were never interested in the first place, Trump has just (again) threatened a 20–50% tariff on 23 countries including allies like Japan and Korea, effective 1 August. Norway included, obviously. There is a point, I presume, when countries will push back and say, no, too expensive. And then lean into other countries to reroute their products to the US markets (that is one great little trick of avoiding tariffs). Or, of course, just turn their back on the US completely and seek other markets to replace it.

I have watched Trump and his tariff bluster for over six months. But most people (and the media) have very short memories. Here is what he promised—publicly, confidently and loudly.

He claimed during his campaign that tariff wars are 'easy to win'. On 25 April 2025 Trump claimed he had completed 200 trade deals. Shortly thereafter the administration set a goal of "90 deals in 90 days" after pausing reciprocal tariffs to negotiate.

As of mid-July he had announced that he had negotiated three deals—UK, Vietnam and China. And he has signed exactly none, at least none that anyone has seen.

Trump's original rationale for these deals was that there was a trade imbalance with the US, with the US on the losing side of the trade, and that needed to be rectified. Which flies in the face of his threatened 50% tariff on Brazilian goods. The US actually has a trade surplus with Brazil.

Trump's reason for the excess Brazil tariff? That country is in the process of prosecuting ex-President Bolsonaro for trying to engineer a coup. Think about this for a moment. The President of the US is threatening punitive tariffs on a democracy whose internal judicial politics offend him because the prosecution's target is a vocal Trump admirer.

Professor Scott Galloway, educator and uber-podcaster doesn't hold back—"Trump is your drunk uncle at a barbecue, shirtless, practising karate moves and threatening to kick someone's arse whilst everyone else quietly starts a WhatsApp group to avoid him."

There is, of course, a lesson here. I am neither a master negotiator nor even a very good card player, but I do know that if you're going to bluff, make sure that you are not called on it. Maybe you can get away with it once, or even twice, but after that it starts to unravel; it simply stops being a useful strategy. People just begin to ignore you. Worse, they start to see you as weak. A fake. A sheep in wolf's clothing.

Consider Japan and South Korea, where the threatened 25% sanctions have not even caused a ripple in their stock markets. According to Galloway, it is because the fine print excludes major market sectors from the tariffs, and so the real tariff figure is closer to 15%. Wink-wink.

Just within the last few days Trump, increasingly irritated with Putin's lack of progress in the Ukraine war, threatened 100% tariffs on Russia if there is not a peace deal on the table in 50 days. There is no one who believes that. No one, not Putin, not China and not Trump's advisors.

There seems to be a narrative building here. When Trump initially went wading in with eye-watering tariff threats and accompanying bluster (and insults) there was a considerable amount of panic in global markets. Now many countries are inured to the multiple instances of 'threaten, delay, threaten again'. They have taken a closer look at the emperor and have noticed the shedding of clothes, and by now they have tabled their Plan Bs and Plan Cs and are not that interested in the insult of what Trump called 'crawling back to us for a deal'.

They will have done something else too. Side meetings with other global actors, whispered conversations and backroom deals. Western agreements that exclude the US. A strengthening of BRICS. Migration of dollar settlements to other currencies. Strange bedfellows and unprecedented alliances.

Which brings us to this. It is not the clumsy shutting of the expected release of the Epstein files, or the cruelty of mass deportations, or termination of tens of thousands of government workers or the blunt object of DOGE shutting down critical projects that will damage Trump.

It will be the gradual isolation from the centre of the world's trading stage and its downstream effects on the consumer.

Steven Boykey Sidley is a professor of practice at JBS, University of Johannesburg and a partner at Bridge Capital and a columnist-at-large at Daily Maverick. His new book "It's Mine: How the Crypto Industry is Redefining Ownership" is published by Maverick451 in SA and Legend Times Group in UK/EU, available now.