Bhuvan—Psychoanalyzing Donald Trump
The Hidden Hero of Economic Progress
Certainty. Like if you think about the global economy, financial markets, political systems, and so forth, certainty and predictability are awesome yet underappreciated. When there is certainty, the machine can move along because the people driving the machine have a sense of predictability about external conditions.
Of course, not everything can be certain. The reality of everyday life—be it at a micro level of an individual, or at a macro scale of a country or nation-state—is uncertainty. But to the extent that people in charge, the people in power, can remove that uncertainty, it helps grease the wheels of economic activity and progress. Things march ahead.
When there is uncertainty, and when people are unable to make sense of what might happen tomorrow, things suddenly come to a grinding halt. Businessmen, without the certainty of tomorrow, without the certainty of policy, taxes, and so forth, cannot make decisions for tomorrow—which means business activity grinds down.
We can extrapolate this grinding down of business activity to an economic level. Firms stop thinking about tomorrow because they're not certain what's in store today. When that happens, they stop making new investments, they stop hiring, they stop spending on research and development. They stop spending on expansion. They stop thinking about new business lines. Everything grinds down to a halt.
This percolates throughout the economy in a myriad of different ways because today's modern economies are complex adaptive systems with feedback loops that are hard for a single individual to make sense of. A slowdown in goods indirectly affects services through ancillary hiring, through spending on research and development, through productivity-based linkages, and so on. These ripples spread through the global trading system, then ripple out to the global financial system, and ripple back into the economy, hurting both Main Street and Wall Street.
Certainty, to the extent that policymakers create an environment of certainty, is an underappreciated hero—not just in economic growth, but in the progress of humanity itself.
Trump: The Architect of Uncertainty
The reason I'm saying this is that, as you're reading this, the global economy seems to be entering one of its most uncertain periods ever. The person chiefly responsible for this uncertainty is Donald Trump.
Ever since he came into office, Donald Trump has unleashed a brutal, utterly capricious, and shambolic trade war that has introduced levels of uncertainty we haven't seen in contemporary periods. The only comparisons people are grasping at are the 2008 global financial crisis and the Great Depression of the 1930s. That tells you something about the level of uncertainty in the system, even adjusted for the penchant for hyperbole in financial media and among experts.
The peculiar thing about this moment is that every single person in the financial markets—traders, investors, or even people interested in the workings of the financial system—is forced to become a psychologist, psychiatrist, and psychoanalyst. Trump is not a man who lends himself to easy descriptions or easy comprehension. Many describe him as a madman, and at a very broad level, that probably makes sense. But it's still very unhelpful if you want to make sense of the man, his actions, what he's going to do, what he has done already, and what he plans to do.
It's funny how we're all suddenly expected to become amateur psychologists to navigate financial markets. In my recent articles, I've been searching for frameworks to make sense of the enigma that is Donald Trump.
Making Sense of Trump's Worldview
In one of my doomscrolling sessions, I recently came across a podcast with Charlie Laderman, a senior lecturer in International History at King's College London, on "Ideas," the podcast of the magazine by the same name. Professor Laderman tries to make sense of Trump's worldview, which itself is a daunting task.
I truly don't know if you can make sense of Donald Trump's worldview given his extreme unpredictability. But at the same time, I don't think you can understand what's happening in the market without some comprehension of how Trump looks at the world and how he acts based on his worldview.
Professor Laderman starts by saying that many people, out of snobbishness, dismiss the notion that Donald Trump possesses some coherent intellectual framework. They look at what he's said, what he's done, and how he's flip-flopped, and dismiss the fact that this person can possibly have any sense of coherence. But he argues that this is just a snobbish view. If you look closely at what Trump has said over the decades, patterns emerge.
The Foundations of Trump's Worldview
The four broad patterns Professor Laderman describes in his interesting podcast (which I highly recommend) are:
1. Trade and Tariffs
On this, Donald Trump has been remarkably consistent throughout his life. You can go back as far as the 1980s—he's been advocating tariffs and protectionist policies. Interestingly, Professor Laderman points out one of Trump's paradoxes: Trump himself became a symbol of American globalization in the late 1980s while never fully embracing globalization himself.
There's a fascinating contradiction here. As Fareed Zakaria noted, when he visited India in the late 80s, people were fascinated by Trump—he was "a personification of a certain sort of glitzy golden US" and an "embodiment of American globalization." Yet Trump himself never really got to grips with globalization. By the early 21st century, as countries developed their own billionaires, Trump was no longer as interesting to international audiences—as Zakaria noted, "they've got their own billionaires."
Trump's approach to trade more closely aligns with Pat Buchanan's 1992 "America First" platform that challenged globalization. Even on tariffs, Trump doesn't blame other countries for taking advantage of the US—the sense is always that "our leaders have been so stupid."
2. Skepticism About Alliances
For this, Professor Laderman gives the example of the 1987 tanker war during the Iran-Iraq War. During this conflict, Iran and Iraq were attacking oil tankers and merchant ships in the Persian Gulf to damage each other's economies. In one instance, a ship named SS Bridgeton, a Kuwaiti oil tanker that had been reflagged with the United States flag for protection, was hit by an Iranian mine in July 1987.
This prompted Ronald Reagan to provide naval escorts for reflagged Kuwaiti tankers through the Persian Gulf. Donald Trump apparently spent $95,000 taking out full-page ads in the New York Times and Washington Post, criticizing US policy in the Persian Gulf for escorting these tankers.
His primary gripe was that the United States was doing this for no benefit because the tankers passing through this region were mainly headed toward Europe and Japan, which were United States allies. He famously said that "there's nothing wrong with American foreign defense policy that a little backbone can't cure."
His grievance was that the United States was doing this for no gain, and ideally, the United States would have collected a payment—a statement reminiscent of mob tactics where bosses provide protection in return for payola.
The takeaway is that Donald Trump isn't an isolationist, but he thinks of American power as a thing that can be traded for payments. It's an asset that's supposed to generate returns. He doesn't really care about alliances and their intrinsic value.
3. The "Illusion of Omnipotence"
Professor Laderman explains that Trump came of age during the 1950s when the United States emerged as the sole superpower after World War II—a truly dominant country with a magnificent, powerful military and an enormous, productive manufacturing base.
Trump thinks of the United States as truly omnipotent and powerful. But in the intervening decades after the post-war period, the United States got embroiled in wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. Trump complains that the United States has "stopped winning wars" because it spent billions and trillions of dollars for no apparent gain, and more importantly, didn't "win."
He blames American leaders for being stupid or incompetent, letting the United States get taken advantage of by other countries. Even on tariffs, he doesn't really blame other countries—he blames United States leaders for getting taken advantage of.
4. Transactionalism and Geographic Advantage
One of the contributing factors to Trump's transactionalism is the United States' geographical advantage. Because the United States has the Pacific and Atlantic oceans on both sides, and is geographically cut off from global hot zones—unlike China or Russia—the United States doesn't really have to worry about adversaries. The United States doesn't have to worry about Mexico and Canada getting together and attacking, or any of the Latin American countries posing a serious threat.
This geographical advantage feeds into Trump's worldview that the United States can always retreat behind its borders and doesn't really have to get dragged into wars. He thinks the US doesn't need to form alliances because it can remain isolated and safe.
Trump: A Creature of Modern Media
Trump is a creature of modern media. He's been heavily involved in World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and has always been in the media limelight, rubbing shoulders with the who's who. This feeds into Trump's worldview—he thinks of politics and real life as a wrestling match where he has to mock people by calling them names, creating theatrical performances, and turning reality itself into a zero-sum worldview with winners and losers, us versus them.
This caricature comes from him being a media figure who gets easily caricatured. It also adds distinctly to his personality because people know him as a stereotype, and they relate to this person. Professor Laderman describes a certain genius in Trump's ability to finagle the media.
The Transactional Nature of Trump's Foreign Policy
Trump's foreign policy approach is fundamentally transactional. He doesn't really care about alliances or values. Trump thinks of United States military power as an asset to be bargained for payments. If somebody wants a security umbrella, they have to pay for it. The question he's always asking is: "What's in it for America?"
You can see this in how he treated President Zelensky of Ukraine and in his complaints about NATO spending. He sees alliances as protection rackets, and in this way, he really acts like a mob boss.
Conclusion: A Stable Worldview Behind the Chaos
When you look at all these statements, from day one, Trump's worldview has been remarkably stable. He thinks of relationships as transactional. He's skeptical of values and alliances. He thinks of everything as a zero-sum game—if somebody has a trade surplus with America, that means America is losing and the other country is winning.
The bigger element is that he thinks the United States is a supreme superpower that has been taken advantage of. He believes the United States has been impotent in exercising its omnipotence—the fact that the United States no longer "wins" in trade or geopolitical entanglements and is getting "pushed around" by allies. It's getting "taken advantage of" by even smaller countries earning trade surpluses, and he thinks of this as America "losing."
This feeds into his ability to take advantage of the backlash against globalization and other complex phenomena. It also explains why his presidency has been characterized by such profound uncertainty—an uncertainty that ripples through financial markets, global trade, and diplomatic relationships worldwide.
In an era that desperately needs certainty to function, we are instead governed by a man whose worldview, while internally consistent, generates unprecedented levels of unpredictability. And that, perhaps, is the greatest irony of all.
Prerana - Peninsular Gneiss present among us
Few days back, I decided to go sightseeing in the city I have spent my whole life. I went on a walking tour in the historic parts of Bengaluru and ended up at Lalbagh Botanical Garden. I sat on the small hillock I have sat on many many times along with other unassuming people around me. And that was when my tour guide told me something that absolutely blew my mind. That rock we were sitting on is over 3 billion years old. That’s not a typo. Billion, with a B.
This massive rock formation is part of a complex named the Peninsular Gneiss and belongs to a type of rock called gneiss, which forms deep inside the Earth’s crust under extreme heat and pressure. Over time, these rock has been pushed to the surface and is present all around the India Peninsula, But the one in Lalbagh - The Lalbagh rock - is one of the oldest and best exposed rocks in all of India, and in fact, the world. While writing this, my mind is still not able to fathom how crazy cool it is that I can just casually walk on something this historic in a public garden.
The surface of the rock had a typical banded pattern, which I later learnt was layers of light and dark minerals like quartz, feldspar, and biotite. These bands tell the story of intense geological processes—tectonic shifts, metamorphism, and cooling—that happened long before any kind of life existed on Earth.
Interestingly, the term “Peninsular Gneiss” was actually coined right here in Bengaluru by a British geologist named W.F. Smeeth back in 1916. It has since become a standard term in Indian geology to refer to this ancient bedrock that forms the core of the Indian subcontinent.
What also caught my attention was that one of Kempe Gowda’s historic watchtowers sits on top of this formation. So in the same spot, you get a glimpse of both Bengaluru’s origin story and the Earth’s early days. Not something I expected in the middle of a botanical garden, certainly not one where I go to buy plants for my own garden.
This particular site in Lalbagh has been declared a National Geological Monument, and it’s easy to see why. It’s a testament to the Earth's deep and long history. And somehow it is visible, walkable, and just... there, existing among us as if it is isn't that big a deal.
All in all, today’s takeaway was this: The Earth and its history will always find ways to surprise you and it is all around. I just have to keep my eye out and be connected to what I see and do.
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