Make America 1900 Again

Remember that beacon of the free world called the United States of America? What happened to it?

Credit: South China Morning Post

Just before Trump signed the death certificate for the American economy in the Rose Garden on Wednesday, Georgia’s worst export since humidity—Newt Gingrich—let the mask slip. Speaking to The Washington Post, he laid out the whole game plan:

“Trump’s goal is to create an environment where we’re back to where we were before World War I.”

That’s not nostalgia. That’s a eulogy.

Because pre–World War I America wasn’t some golden age of greatness—it was a gilded cage. A rigged economy, a rigged society, a rigged system built to serve the few and exploit the many. And now, under the banner of “America First,” Trump is trying to drag us back to that era—not to lead the world, but to step aside and let others do it instead.

This isn’t making America great again.

It’s making space for China. It’s handing over trade routes to the EU. It’s removing the U.S. from the table—and acting surprised when someone else sits down.

Trump isn’t reviving American strength. He’s reviving a version of America that was isolationist, exclusionary, and easy to surpass.

And the rest of the world? They’re not waiting around. They’re moving in.

The America Trump Yearns For

Let's break it down. Pre-Great War America wasn't some Norman Rockwell fever dream:

• The economy? Controlled by robber barons. Carnegie had steel. Rockefeller had oil. J.P. Morgan had everything else. If you weren't in the club, you worked 12-hour days for peanuts, or sent your kids into the mines because labor laws and safety nets didn't exist.
  

• The wealth gap? Astronomical. The rich weren't just rich. They were feudal. No income tax, no unemployment benefits, no OSHA, no minimum wage. Get hurt on the job? Starve. Lose your job? Starve faster.
  

• Women? No vote. No rights. No say. Suffrage wouldn't come until 1920.
  

• Black Americans? Lynched in the South, locked out in the North. Jim Crow wasn't an aberration—it was policy.
  

• Immigration? Built on exclusion and eugenics. The Chinese Exclusion Act was law. Literacy tests kept out the "wrong" people. Eugenics wasn't fringe—it was mainstream, eventually inspiring Hitler's racial laws.
  

• Foreign policy? Isolationist to the core. Fortress America. High tariffs, few alliances, zero interest in global cooperation—precisely the model Trump wants to resurrect, not because it worked, but because it gives him the illusion of control.

This isn't nostalgia. It's necromancy. They're not reviving a better America—they're resurrecting a version where the powerful ruled unchecked, the rest were disposable, and

the "American Dream" had a whites-only sign hanging on it.

The World Moves On

While Trump and his allies yearn for the bad old days, the rest of the world isn't playing along.

Here in the United Kingdom, a phrase gaining traction in every major policy conversation is "coalition of the willing." It's how the world organizes itself when America goes AWOL—on foreign aid, military missions, and increasingly, economic strategy.

Trump's policies aren't just disruptive—they're self-defeating. By pulling America out of alliances, torching trade deals, and treating cooperation as weakness, he's created a power vacuum. And the world is filling it—not with tanks, but with trade agreements, supply chains, and economic alliances no longer led by the United States:

• China secured the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership—the largest trade pact on earth—and is positioning to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, the very deal Trump killed.
  

• The EU finalized a historic trade deal with Mercosur and launched its Anti-Coercion Instrument—essentially a legal crowbar for pushing back against economic bullying from Trump or Beijing.
  

• Canada and Mexico are drafting contingency plans. Japan, South Korea, and China are building trilateral ties designed to circumvent American volatility.

This isn't theoretical. It's happening now.

Lessons Unlearned

You'd think Trump's team would have learned from previous failures, like when they slapped tariffs on Chinese goods in 2018. Beijing retaliated by targeting U.S. soybeans—America's biggest agricultural export and a political pressure point.

China's 25% tariff effectively cut off U.S. farmers overnight, redirecting massive orders to Brazil. Within months, Brazil became China's top supplier, and by 2024, it accounted for nearly 75% of China's soybean imports, while the U.S. share plummeted below 20%.

Even after the trade war cooled, China didn't return. They locked in long-term contracts with Brazil and funded new infrastructure to make the shift permanent. American farmers got a $28 billion bailout. Brazil got the business.

Now it's happening again. Supply chains are being rerouted. Diplomatic maps are being redrawn. The world's economic center of gravity is shifting—not because America lost a war, but because we stopped showing up.

Trump's trade war isn't making America great. It's making us irrelevant.

And the world isn't waiting for us to wake up.

It's moving on.