Trump, the architect: How the US president is reshaping the world in his own image

This is Donald Trump's world; we are all just living in it. Even though he is just the president of the US, he decides and influences, or forces, his rule on other nations, even those on the other side of the world.

In his second term back in office, Trump has governed with the confidence of a man convinced that the world is his chessboard. He has acted not merely as the leader of the United States but as the self-appointed architect of an alternative world order, one ruled by tariffs, threats, selective alliances, and a disdain for the old liberal international system that Washington once built and protected.

And nothing indicates this transformation better than the sheer scale of his actions. In last year alone, Trump signed 213 executive orders, an avalanche of directives reshaping trade, immigration, foreign policy, and national security.

But beneath the bravado, there is a fragile reality: He has shaped the world to his liking, but in doing so, he has torn apart the old balance sheet of global stability, and now, unexpectedly, fate may be slipping through his fingers.

Architect of a disordered world

For decades, the so-called liberal international order served as the guiding script for global behaviour. It was never perfectly liberal nor perfectly orderly, but it provided a shared framework of rules, norms and aspirations. Countries were supposed to join it, benefit from it, or at least navigate within its boundaries.

But that era has ended, because the very country that built the system has withdrawn from it.

Trump's America no longer echoes John F Kennedy's vow to "Pay any price, bear any burden" for liberty. Instead, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has declared that the old liberal order is "Not just obsolete; it is now a weapon being used against" the US.

In practice, this translates to a US government openly hostile to multilateral rules and aggressively defensive of its own self-defined national interests.

A year of economic upheaval

Trump has made no secret of his disdain for multilateral constraints.

In just one year, he has torn up trade rules, upended alliances and unsettled markets. His "Liberation Day" tariffs, unveiled on 2 April, sent global markets tumbling. The S&P 500 initially swung sharply but eventually settled 9.4% higher than when he took office, a sign of both volatility and resilience fueled by policy reversals.

The dollar had a different story. Since March, USD has depreciated sharply, shaken by fears that tariffs will choke economic growth. Rumours of Trump prematurely naming a new Federal Reserve chair who would favour lower interest rates only added to the pressure. 

As the dollar slid, the euro appreciated, boosted by Europe's pledge to increase defence spending in response to Trump's unpredictability.

Bond markets have been equally jittery. Yields on 10-year Treasury bonds rose after Trump's election, fell when investors sensed looser monetary policy, then climbed once more as doubts about Trump's fiscal plans mounted.

Even cryptocurrency, an asset that Trump once promised would flourish under his leadership, has been swept into the turbulence. Despite his promise to make America "The Bitcoin superpower of the world," it dropped 9.8% since his first year, reversing a short-lived rally after a tentative trade truce with China.

Meanwhile, inflation flirted with the Fed's 2% target, crept up again: from 2.7% in July to 3% in September, thanks in part to firms passing on tariff costs, with average import duties now hovering around 10%.

Power projection

Trump's worldview is deeply influenced by the idea that power must be visible. His decision to send a US warship near Venezuelan waters, alongside naval reinforcements in the region, is a reminder of how he views coercion as negotiation. The move accompanied intensifying pressure on President Nicolás Maduro.

The Trump administration has consistently supported the Venezuelan political opposition and denounced Nicolás Maduro as an illegitimate ruler, and it reflected the administration's broader strategy: challenge adversaries, unsettle competitors, and force outcomes through intimidation.

For decades, the so-called liberal international order served as the guiding script for global behaviour. It was never perfectly liberal nor perfectly orderly, but it provided a shared framework of rules, norms and aspirations. Countries were supposed to join it, benefit from it, or at least navigate within its boundaries. But that era has ended, because the very country that built the system has withdrawn from it.

The Venezuelan opposition figure currently at the forefront is María Corina Machado, who was widely seen as the actual winner of the 2024 presidential election but was prohibited from running by the Maduro regime.

Machado has publicly supported the Trump administration's aggressive posture against Maduro; she even went to dedicate her Nobel Peace Prize to Trump.

China and Russia have both faced similar pressure. From trade sanctions to diplomatic posturing, Trump has framed relations with both powers in terms of transactions, each interaction a negotiation, each negotiation a threat.

Iran has also been on the receiving end of Trump's ire. His pressure campaigns have been justified domestically as peace-through-strength, even as critics argue they have fuelled regional instability. Trump insists he has "stopped" seven different conflicts worldwide, including "preventing" escalation between India and Pakistan, although independent verification of these claims remains thin.

The pattern is very obvious: force, threat and transactionalism define his foreign policy. But optics matter, and Trump has mastered the optics of global dominance.

Rewriting the economic script

If the global economy has become a theatre for Trump's geopolitical ambitions.

The US unemployment rate sits at 4.3%, a figure Trump cites frequently as evidence of success. Yet under the headline, there are signs of deterioration. The manufacturing sector has started cutting workers. Job creation is weakening; August saw only 22,000 jobs added, compared with an expected 75,000. Several months of earlier strong data were later revised downward.

The government shutdown, triggered by Trump's conflict with Congress, halted almost all official economic data releases. Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, warned that policymakers were "driving in the fog". With the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics sacked by Trump after "weak job figures," economists were left dependent on private estimates that contradict one another.

Inflation, meanwhile, has crept upward from 2.7% in July to 3% in September, as firms passed tariff costs onto consumers. With average import duties hovering around 10%, further rises appear likely.

GDP paints an equally unusual picture. The economy shrank by 0.5% in the first quarter, surged to 3% in the second, and analysts now struggle to determine how much of these fluctuations reflect real conditions rather than measurement distortions caused by import surges ahead of tariffs.

And the public faces instability. Consumer confidence plunged when Trump took office, recovered slightly in June and July, then fell again, to its lowest level since June 2022.

Another one of Trump's most consequential moves has been the new immigration act and the removal of large numbers of undocumented immigrants from the US. For his base, these actions signal strength and the restoration of national sovereignty. 

For critics, they represent cruelty and chaos. For Trump, they are political tools, visible displays of power that blur the line between governance and performance.

Trump claims his leadership has prevented wars, restored American dominance, and forced adversaries to back down, yet the global landscape tells a different story. The liberal international order is collapsing not just because of shifting global power, but because the US itself has abandoned the system it once built. Illiberal regimes are gaining traction worldwide, while vast regions are sliding deeper into conflict.

China is rising but doing so cautiously, resisting US pressure without taking on broader global leadership. In the vacuum left behind, no new international order has emerged to replace the old one.

In this vacuum, plurilateral coalitions on specific issues, trade, health, and climate may be the only viable form of cooperation. But even these are fragile, and Trump's actions often undermine them.

Trump's visits to Asian nations showcased a different side of his diplomacy: One rooted in transactional flattery and strategic intimidation. He leaned on allies to increase defence spending, pressured partners over trade imbalances, and signalled to China that the Indo-Pacific would remain a theatre of American interest.

The outcomes remain ambiguous. Asian nations welcomed dialogue but resisted his demands. China continued to expand its influence silently. And US allies grew increasingly wary of an America that insists on loyalty but no longer promises stability.

Then came Mamdani

While Trump has tried to reshape the world, the political ground beneath him at home is shifting.

The victory of Mamdani, a progressive who won the mayorship of New York, was symbolically devastating. 

New York is the city that shaped Trump's identity, the birthplace of his business empire, and the environment that forged his political persona. For such a city to elect his ideological opposite is a quiet but meaningful rebuke.

The political storm gathering in Washington may soon prove more dangerous than any trade war or naval deployment. On 3 November 2026, the US midterm elections put every seat in the House of Representatives (435 seats) on the line, along with 35 seats in the Senate (33 regular, 2 special).

If the opposition succeeds, Trump's ability to legislate will be curtailed. An opposition-controlled Senate could block key appointments and limit his reach. A House majority might stymie his spending plans, investigate his administration, and challenge his executive power in every step.

In short, the very engine of control he has built will be threatened. Without a compliant Congress, his global gambits may run into legal, political, and institutional headwinds.

Is Trump winning or failing?

The answer depends on where one stands.

Trump has undoubtedly shaped his own world: a world where power trumps principle, deals matter more than norms, and executive orders bypass democratic debate. But in the process, he has destabilised both global order and domestic institutions.

In Trump's world, perhaps the greatest risk is not from rivals abroad, but from the very system he has spent so much effort reshaping, and from a country that may be finally waking up to the cost of his ambition.