While Donald Trump talks tough on trade, the real threat isn’t foreign nations. It’s the global corporate system that has hollowed out our economies, weakened democracy and deepened inequality.
You’d be forgiven for thinking, after last week’s announcement from Donald Trump, that America was finally waking up to the perils of globalisation.
The president’s latest volley of tariffs has been framed as a kind of economic ‘liberation’, a long-overdue break from foreign dependence, designed to bring industry and self-reliance back home. To some ears, this may even sound like common sense.
After more than four decades studying the impacts of global trade, however, I can say with deep conviction that this isn’t the kind of liberation we need.
Most mainstream commentators still treat it as an economic inevitability, or at worst, a slightly bumpy road to prosperity.
The truth is far more troubling.
Our deepening dependence on distant supply chains and multinational corporations has not only weakened local economies, it has undermined democracy itself, hollowing out communities, accelerating ecological breakdown, and disempowering people in both the global North and South.
Theatrical gesture
In that context, Trump’s tariffs may look like a course correction, but they’re not a serious response to the underlying crisis. They’re a theatrical gesture, a band-aid stuck over a deep wound made worse by decades of deregulation and corporate privilege.
The real threat is from stateless global corporations that operate above the law. Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) clauses in ‘free trade’ treaties enable corporations to sue governments simply for trying to protect their citizens or the environment.
From Germany to Thailand, companies have been winning payouts for lost profits after countries dared to ban toxic mining, raise minimum wages or restrict harmful chemicals.
Nation states v corps
Recently, Australian mining company Energy Transition Minerals began suing Greenland for up to $11.5 billion – roughly ten times the country’s annual GDP – over its 2021 decision to ban uranium mining. This corporate overreach makes a mockery of democracy.
And while Trump may talk tough about ‘protecting American workers,’ his administration’s record tells a different story. Just last year, $1 billion was cut from two USDA programs that supported local food purchasing.
At best, tariffs like Trump’s may reduce some of the most absurd types of global trade, where goods are shipped halfway around the world for no clear reason beyond corporate profit.
The US, for instance, has been importing over a million tonnes of beef annually, while exporting roughly the same amount.
We cannot, however, mistake this kind of slapdash protectionism for a vision of economic renewal.
If anything, it distracts us from the real work of rebuilding local economies in a way that is thoughtful, inclusive and ecologically grounded.
True economic localisation is about more than borders and tariffs. It’s about reweaving the fabric of interdependence at the community level, supporting local food systems, small businesses and place-based education. It’s about reinvesting in the real economy: soil, water, biodiversity and human care. Perhaps most importantly, it’s about challenging the structural power of multinational corporations that currently dominate our economic lives.
The future lies in localisation, not as a return to isolation but as a path toward connection and renewal.
This path is already being walked. From Byron Bay to Bangalore, people across the world are rediscovering the power of local. They’re forming food co-ops and tool libraries, building community energy projects and launching regional investment schemes. They’re choosing to support their neighbours over distant shareholders. Localising reduces emissions and creates meaningful jobs not by increasing consumption, but by replacing fossil fuel-intensive systems with human-scale ones, relying more on people and less on polluting technologies.
It also helps rebuild a sense of belonging. When we shorten the distances between production and consumption, we rebuild trust, reciprocity and care. These are the foundations of real prosperity.
If we’re serious about liberation – economic, ecological, or psychological – we must target the system that allowed global corporations to overrun our lives in the first place.
That means re-regulating trade, revoking corporate privileges, and empowering communities to meet more of their needs closer to home.
Now that would be a policy worthy of the word liberation.
♦ Helena Norberg-Hodge, director of Local Futures and co-founder of the International Forum on Globalisation, will speak at Thriving in Uncertain Times on Saturday, April 26, from 2.30 to 5pm at Marvell Hall, with Damon Gameau. Tickets: relocalise.org/events.
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