BBC NewsBorrowing was £17.4bn last month, the second highest October figure since monthly records began in 1993.
Finito World
As the festive lights blink across the London skyline, and office parties briefly distract us from the harder business of modern life, one question persists beneath the surface cheer: what kind of world of work are we entering in 2026? That question, increasingly, is shaped not just by AI or climate or war – but by trade policy. And at the heart of that lies Donald Trump’s attempt to rewrite the global economic rules.
Trump’s second presidency has been marked by an audacious trade agenda: the sweeping tariffs of 2025 are not tinkering at the edges, but a frontal assault on the architecture of globalisation. A 10 percent across-the-board tariff, followed by targeted increases against countries seen as ‘cheaters’ – notably China, Germany and South Korea – has signalled the end of America’s role as global free-trade cheerleader. These are not idle threats: they have been implemented by executive order, and enforced with real teeth. He has succeeded, in other words, in shifting the Overton window on trade permanently.
To give the former president credit, he has never disguised what he wants. He sees trade not as a mutually beneficial exchange but as a competition – one America was, in his view, duped into losing. He has tapped into a reservoir of genuine grievance in hollowed-out towns and ex-industrial states, where promises of retraining never quite arrived, and where the “knowledge economy” feels like someone else’s gain. For these voters, Trump’s trade stance offers a kind of moral redress. The symbolism is powerful: America standing up for itself again.
Yet symbolism does not always create outcomes. For all the headlines and tariffs, the promised industrial renaissance remains uneven, and many still point out – with some justification – that Trumponomics is inherently inflationary. Some domestic manufacturing has picked up, but these jobs are neither as plentiful nor as secure as advertised. For every reopened steel mill, there are price increases across consumer goods, supply-chain delays, and jittery employers postponing hiring decisions. Apple, Amazon, and Ford all warn of margin pressure. The effects are visible not just on stock tickers, but in interview rooms: fewer internships, less appetite for apprenticeships, and a mounting nervousness about futureproofing.
More interesting still is the way the rest of the world has responded—not with panic, but adaptation. The EU has inked new trade pacts with India and Brazil. ASEAN has deepened integration. China is rerouting its exports through third countries. Globalisation, it turns out, is more resilient than Trump may have hoped. What has emerged is not a world deglobalised, but one in which America has less influence over the flows that matter. In trying to restore control, Trump may have accelerated the formation of trade networks that deliberately bypass the US.
And so, while the president’s strategy has succeeded in refocusing domestic attention on the costs of globalisation, it has yet to deliver a coherent framework for prosperity in its place. Protectionism, like salt, must be used sparingly. As an organising principle for a whole economy, it risks becoming sour. Worse, it breeds uncertainty, which is kryptonite for employability. Companies that cannot plan, cannot hire. Graduates facing an incoherent labour market are not liberated by tariffs – they’re stranded by them.
For workers, the implications are both economic and psychological. Stability underpins ambition. When you don’t know whether your sector will be taxed into retreat, or if the cost of components will make your job redundant, it is harder to invest in yourself. Employers, likewise, grow cautious. The long-term training programme gets deferred. That international secondment is suddenly off the table. Human capital, once the great hope of post-industrial renewal, becomes an afterthought.
And yet, the reality is that Trump has changed the terms of debate. Both parties now speak the language of managed trade. The free-trade consensus that reigned for decades is broken, and unlikely to return in its original form. In that sense, his revolution is real.
So as we look ahead to 2026, the task is not to wish away this shift, but to respond intelligently to it. This is the Christmas message we might carry into the new year: that even as barriers rise and the rhetoric of separation grows louder, it is the open-minded, the agile, and the skilled who will prevail. For all Trump’s efforts to recast the economy in nationalist terms, the global labour market remains irrepressibly human – and it still rewards those who learn, who adjust, and who persevere.
