"It was also a principal beneficiary" Wow is that far off. Anyone familiar with the US trade deficit would laugh at such a claim. A better description might be the US was (and still is) the “designated loser” in world trade. There have several important studies of the impact of US trade policy since 2000. The titles tell you a lot. “Import Competition and the Great US Employment Sag of the 2000s”, “Trade Liberalization and Mortality: Evidence from U.S. Counties”, “Foreign Competition and Domestic Innovation: Evidence from U.S. Patents”, and “Putting a Smiley Face on the Dragon”. The contents of these papers tell a compelling story. US trade policy has been a staggering disaster for most (but not all) Americans.



Have the outsourcers benefited from “free trade”? Sure they have. Have the cheap labor exploiter benefited from Open Borders? Sure they have. Have the cosmopolitan elites benefited? Of course. Ordinary Americans? Not so much.



The claim that technology (rather than trade plus immigration) has destroyed the middle-class is a mantra of the left (and part of the right as well). Unfortunately, it is not true. Check the FRED series MANEMP for the actual numbers. US manufacturing employment crashed under Bush (43) and Obama. Did some massive productivity boom occur over the same period? Not exactly. Of course, mass unskilled immigration has devastated the lives of millions of Americans, will leaving US. public schools in ruins. California once had high real wages for workers, affordable housing, great schools, and relatively low inequality. Now it has low wages, unaffordable housing, mass poverty, failed schools, and high inequality. That said, Open Borders are the religion of the left.



Of course, the very idea that one U.S. president could terminate a “liberal world order” that was obviously so beneficial, is absurd. No U.S. president has anything approach that much power. The truth is that “liberal world order” has been failing for a long time and Trump has dared to say what lots of people know.



It should be obvious that with anti-liberal powers gaining all over the world (Russia, China, Turkey, etc.), the “liberal world order” was going to decline. Several years ago (long before Trump), China became the dominant economic power of the world. China has no use for the “liberal world order” and was never going to support it. China alone killed the dominance of the “liberal world order”. Given that China’s GDP will be 3X the U.S. by 2030-2040, the world was going to massively change one way or another. Trump is simply pointing out that the emperor has no clothes.



The sad truth is the U.S. dominance peaked more than 70 years ago. After WWII, the U.S. accounted for 1/3rd of world GDP and 50% of world manufactured output (and CO2 production). Now the U.S. is well below 1/6th of world output. Back then, the U.S. controlled world oil, aviation, banking, telecoms, currency transfers, etc. None of these de facto powers exist anymore .



The idea that the US can prop up (or destroy) a “liberal world order” is rooted in a past that no long exists. The world has moved on. It well past time, for cosmopolitan elites (in Europe and the USA) to do the same.



The “liberal world order” was a paradise of neoliberals and the practitioners of racial/ethnic/sexual identity politics. For the rest of the people, not so much. In a democracy, a failed system get voted out of office. Brexit, Trump, Italy, Poland, Hungary, Austria, etc. all come to mind.