The world in flux and Trump’s role in a new equilibrium

The second Trump administration has so far brought a lot of things: market shocks, volatile trade policies, and turbulent foreign relationships. But beyond the chaos, renowned geopolitics expert Stephen Kotkin said Trump has an unwitting role to help the world rebalance and reach a “new equilibrium” in the global order.

Professor Kotkin, who is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, said the initiatives Trump set in motion signals that the US is retreating from the world, but it is not about the world’s largest economy giving up its position as the world leader.

“This is about a rebalancing of the costs and benefits, and it’s happening, and it’s a mess, and Trump’s version of it is going to maybe even fail to produce a new equilibrium, but it’s going to break the current equilibrium that needed to be broken.”

In this live recording from the Fiduciary Investors Symposium, hosted by Top1000funds.com in Singapore in March 2025, Professor Kotkin unpacks what’s next for the US and the world in conversation with Conexus Financial founder and managing director, Colin Tate.

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