The claim isn’t really that Trump “killed globalism” overnight.

It’s that the model we’ve been living under for the last 30 years is breaking and Trump accelerated the break instead of trying to manage it quietly.

Globalization promised cheaper goods, endless growth, and stability. What it delivered for a lot of people was wage stagnation, hollowed-out industries, dependency on fragile supply chains, and decision-making that moved further away from voters and closer to institutions most people never voted for.

That tension has been building for decades.

Trade tariffs aren’t just economic policy. They’re leverage. They’re a signal that the U.S. is willing to absorb short-term pain to regain control over production, borders, and decision-making. You don’t have to agree with the strategy to understand the message: national interests are back on the table.

When leaders like Keir Starmer say “the world as we knew it is gone,” they’re not being dramatic. They’re acknowledging that the assumptions of the post-Cold War era open borders, frictionless trade, global governance are no longer politically sustainable.

The deeper conflict isn’t left vs right.

It’s global coordination vs national sovereignty.

You can’t maximize all three at once:

Globalization

National sovereignty

Democratic accountability

Something has to give.

Trump’s election represented voters choosing sovereignty and democratic control over global integration. Not because globalism is evil, but because it stopped serving large parts of the population.

The idea of a “post-national” world isn’t a conspiracy. It’s been openly discussed for years by political leaders, economists, and global institutions. The argument was that shared global problems required shared global solutions. The problem is that those solutions often bypassed voters entirely.

That creates backlash not because people are stupid or fearful, but because people don’t like losing agency over their own countries.

What we’re likely moving toward isn’t a utopia or a dystopia. It’s something older and messier: regional power blocs.

The U.S. will prioritize its hemisphere.

China will dominate Asia unless checked.

Russia will try to control its near borders.

Europe will struggle to unify or fracture into competing centers.

The Middle East will remain contested.

Africa will continue to be a prize rather than a player unless that changes internally.

This shift brings instability, market shocks, and conflict risk but it also reflects reality. The hyper-globalized world was always more fragile than it looked.

The real question isn’t whether globalism is ending.

It’s whether nations can reassert control without sliding into authoritarianism, and whether leaders can act decisively without severing cooperation entirely.

History doesn’t move in straight lines. It oscillates.

Right now, the pendulum is swinging back toward borders, power, and responsibility because too many people felt those things had disappeared.

What comes next won’t be clean.

But pretending the old system still works won’t save it either.