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by ian bremmer

Last week, I had the privilege and pleasure of serving as commencement speaker for graduates of the School of Liberal Arts at Tulane University, my alma mater. And the venue was the Louisiana Superdome, a little bigger of a house than I’m used to.

It was a great day for me, and I’ll always be grateful to Tulane for the invitation. But it was a sobering experience too. It’s one thing to look out over a crowd of this year’s graduates, young women and men who are well prepared for challenges ahead but who may not yet appreciate just how messed up our world is right now. It’s quite another when you’re looking into the faces of this year’s graduates of your alma mater. The people who now sit where you sat. It makes me more aware of how just much has happened on the road from 1989 to 2025 – how much we couldn’t have imagined.

Here's the speech in full…

It’s great to be back at Tulane.

And I'm honored to be your distinguished alum.

I realize it's possible you've decided to give me this award because you neglected to look into my time here as a student.

I was 15 when I came to Tulane, a kid from the projects outside Boston. I went to an all-boys Catholic high school. This led to an unusually exciting freshman year. I lied about my age, both for drinking purposes (which I had never done before), and also for dating purposes (which I had also never done before).

I missed classes, slept through a final, had a 1.9 GPA my first term. When they put me on probation and threatened to send me home to Boston, I figured I should spend less time at the Boot and more time in my classes.

In the end, I graduated without further public controversy. For me, Tulane was a laboratory of people and personalities, of studies and learning, of theory and of facts on the ground. I have the school of liberal arts to thank that I can tell the difference.

But when I graduated, I realized that no one actually hired political scientists, and so I decided to start a company to persuade people that political science mattered. Thirty years later, I've made a career of it. I’ve made it possible for at least a few political scientists to have jobs doing just that.

I suppose that’s the reason I’m receiving Tulane's distinguished alumni award (and truly, I am honored by it). But at the same time, I am a little bummed out about it, because compared to pretty much all of the parents here, I am failing most dramatically in my broader professional efforts. It's tough to be a political scientist right now. The stuff I work on — helping understand political leaders, governments, the world order — it's all falling apart.

Back when I graduated this was not true. I was class of 1989. That's the year you want to graduate as a political scientist. The Wall came down. We won the cold war. Collective security, free trade, rule of law, democracy. For everybody.

The problem is that we were winners, but we weren't leaders. The leaders were the people that won back in World War II and that created the world order on the ashes of that destroyed world. The Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, General MacArthur rebuilding Japan. The United Nations. The US-led global order.

Today, we've grown too comfortable as the most powerful country in that world, with the almighty dollar, the only global military, the top global businesses, and the best universities. We are in the most stable part of the world, with generally friendly neighbors (at least until we started fighting with them). Protected by both great oceans.

For generations now we have been the most privileged nation, but our own political system has become the most dysfunctional among rich democracies. Most everyone agrees on this. We even agree on who to blame. It's the “other guys.

So, what are we going to do about it? I use my voice to be speak up about it. We can't fix a problem until we identify it. I get things wrong, but I say what I truly believe in the hopes that helps other people do the same.

Because when we stand up, when law firms stand up, when universities stand up, courage is contagious. We have to show people a way.

Tulane class of 2025, what will you do about it?

First, you already have. You chose the liberal arts, which means, at some point, you made a conscious decision to pursue ideas over income – at least initially. It’s brave. It’s noble. It’s…confusing to your family.

But what you’ve been doing here matters, because while engineers are out there designing drones, you’ve been asking the more important question: who gets to decide where they fly? While business schools are simulating markets, you’ve been asking: who is this economy actually working for? While accountants are balancing the books, you've been asking: why do we pay taxes?

Let’s talk about the world you’re walking into. It’s no 1989, but it’s lively. We’ve got a climate crisis, a technology arms race, and a bunch of hot wars. We’ve got global alliances falling apart, superpowers behaving like exes who keep texting each other at 2AM, and a US domestic political environment that feels like a mad libs game with too many sazeracs.

But I’m not here to depress you. That’s what Twitter’s for.

I'm here to remind you: this is your moment. And no, not in the “you are the future” way that commencement speakers love to say before the parents applaud them. I mean you actually have an edge. You studied complexity. You learned that history doesn’t repeat, but it does plagiarize. You know that “unprecedented” really just means we didn’t study the past closely enough. You know that context is what matters, and that headlines don't tell the story. In a world of polarization, you’ve studied nuance. In a time of information overload, you’ve practiced discernment. In an age obsessed with outcomes, you’ve explored meaning.

Hopefully you have also learned along the way that -- ChatGPT notwithstanding -- hard work does pay off.

So, let me point out that all of those skills I just mentioned don’t just make for good leaders. Those skills make for good people.

Understanding complexity, believing that there is value in the truth, seeking the good in people, and looking beyond the moment right in front of you. Those are skills you need for life.

And you’re in it right now. A lot of ambitious young people set out these markers of achievement for themselves, and of course you’re sitting here on top of a big one. Having achieved one, you push for the next, and so you might think my real adult life begins when I get my first job, when I get out of grad school, when I buy my first home. Don’t do that. Your real adult life is already here. You’ll make mistakes, and you’ll have regrets. But you grow from them.

If you stay true to the skills and values that you’ve learned here, if you care about the family and friends that have moved you forward, your life will be rich, whatever path you choose.

So, what should you do with your liberal arts degree? Whatever you want.

Some of you will go into journalism, helping us understand a world spinning faster by the day. Others will work in policy, trying to keep the world from setting itself on fire – literally and metaphorically. Some will become artists, storytellers, teachers, nonprofit leaders, or the only ethics advisor at a tech company full of Stanford dropouts. That job will be important.

I’m not saying it’ll be easy. Your algorithms will try to convince you every day that nuance doesn't matter, and that more stuff and money will make you happy. Fight against that. Stay curious. Stay human. Stay weird, but the good kind of weird – the kind that doesn’t let cynicism turn into detachment.

And please, when you start running things – because trust me that day is sooner than you think – remember what you learned here: that ethics without power doesn't accomplish much, and that power without ethics is what got us here.

I'm counting on you, Tulane graduates. I’m counting on you to be as welcoming to weirdo strangers as you were to me as a 15-year-old freshman.

I’m counting on you to use new technologies, especially AI, that allow for innovation—improving your own capabilities—inconceivable when I graduated.

I’m counting on you to be curious as the world changes around us, to connect more closely with those that are different from you, and to recognize your connections with one another in spite of those differences.

I'm counting on you to be admired not because of your money and privilege but because you act the way others know they should.

I'm counting on you to be inspiring not because of your charisma and personality, but because you set the standard. I'm counting on you to be leaders again. Because if you don't, we're leaving it to the finance majors.

Tulane graduates, I believe in you. My thanks for giving me the opportunity to tell you that.

And congratulations to you on this most important day.

It’s been three and a half years since I first laid out the idea of a technopolar world: one no longer dominated solely by states, but increasingly shaped – and sometimes steered – by a handful of powerful tech companies with the newfound ability to influence economies, societies, politics, and geopolitics.

At the time, I said the power of Big Tech was poised to grow but argued governments wouldn’t go down without a fight and sketched out three potential futures, depending on how the showdown between them played out: one in which tech companies displaced governments as the principal sovereigns of a globalized digital order; one where a tech cold war took hold and states reasserted control over a fragmented cyberspace; and one in which state dominance gave way to a new order led by tech firms.

This week, I published a follow-up in Foreign Affairs “The Technopolar Paradox: The Frightening Fusion of Tech Power and State Power” – looking at how those predictions have aged, what’s actually happened since 2021, and where we might be heading next.

Spoiler: the trends I flagged back then have only accelerated. But reality has turned out messier, and more dangerous, than anyone could’ve imagined.

Here’s what you need to know.

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For the past fifteen years, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has coasted from one election victory to another. Since returning to power in 2010, the self-proclaimed defender of “illiberal democracy” has transformed his country into an “electoral autocracy” – reshaping institutions, rewriting election laws, muzzling independent media, and stacking the courts – where elections are technically free but heavily tilted in his favor, the media landscape is dominated by government allies, and the ruling party – Fidesz – uses the machinery of the state to reward supporters and punish dissent.

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This is the third and last mailbag of the spring season. Check out the previous two here and here. I will resume the newsletter’s regularly scheduled programming next week, but I hope you’ve found this detour from long-form columns valuable and that I’ve covered some of the things that might have been on your mind.

Here we go (as always, questions lightly edited for clarity).

Gun to your head, what Democrat stands the best chance of becoming president in 2028?

Given how much the country – and the world – will change in the next couple of years, I suspect it'll be someone that nobody has on their shortlist right now. Or did you put money on “The Apprentice” host changing the course of history back in 2013?

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Jess Frampton

Welcome to another edition of my mailbag, where I attempt to make sense of our increasingly chaotic world, one reader question at a time. If you have a burning question for me before I go back to full-length columns, ask it here and I’ll answer as many as I can in next week’s newsletter.

Let’s dive in (with questions lightly edited for clarity).

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Collage of Ian Bremmer, Donald Trump, and other world leaders.

Jess Frampton

If you feel like you're drowning in the 24-hour news tsunami lately, you're not alone. Headlines are moving at the speed of light, massively consequential policies are being announced (then rolled back) via social media, and longstanding global alliances seem to shift with each passing day. It's hard enough just trying to keep up, let alone separate the signal from the noise.

Because a weekly long-form column often can't do justice to everything happening simultaneously across our increasingly chaotic world, I invited readers to ask their most pressing questions on all things political and geopolitical. You wanted to know about everything from the contents of Donald Trump’s heart to the risk of a Taiwan invasion to the future of the dollar and, yes, whether I'd ride Moose like a moose jockey given the opportunity.

Below is the first batch of answers, with questions lightly edited for clarity. If you have something you’d like to ask me, submit your questions here and I’ll take as many as I can in the upcoming weeks.

Let's dive in.

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Jess Frampton

Globalization helped make the United States the most prosperous nation in history. But many Americans feel they haven’t benefited from free trade and voted for Donald Trump to “liberate” them from the system the United States built over the past 80 years. He is delivering.

“Now it is our turn to prosper,” President Trump proclaimed on April 2 as he announced sweeping tariffs on almost every US trading partner (plus a few uninhabited territories), ranging from 10% to 50%, that came into full force earlier today. Overnight, the US average effective tariff rate shot up to over 22% (from one of the world’s lowest at the beginning of the year), the highest since the turn of the previous century – higher even than the infamous 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariffs, which are widely blamed for starting a global trade war and deepening the Great Depression.

Facing a hit to their economies, many of America’s trade partners have been tempted to respond in kind. Most also recognize that trade wars are a losing game, adding the risk of an escalatory spiral to the economic self-harm of tariffs. They have accordingly been playing defense and trying to offer Trump deals in the hopes of securing concessions. The notable exception was China, the one country with the leverage to hit back, which responded with tit-for-tat tariffs on US imports.

Then, in a sudden shift just a few hours ago under massive financial pressure, Trump announced he would immediately bring down tariffs on most countries to a universal 10% for the next 90 days, ostensibly as a reward for not retaliating – but really to stop markets from spiraling out of control. At the same time, he raised tariffs on Chinese exports to 125% after Beijing retaliated twice with duties on US goods totaling 84%. This effectively severs much of the remaining trade between the world's two largest economies, accelerating the decoupling process and forcing global supply chains to reorganize even faster than anticipated.

Faulty math, faulty logic

Trump had described the “liberation day” tariffs as “reciprocal,” saying that the United States is only doing onto other countries as they do to the US. But the formula the administration ended up using doesn’t consider the tariff rates and nontrade barriers other countries impose on US exports at all. Instead, the calculation assumes that bilateral goods trade deficits are necessarily and entirely “unfair,” representing “the sum of all cheating.”

This is a gross misunderstanding of how trade works. There’s no linear correlation between a country’s protectionism and its bilateral trade balances. Bilateral surpluses and deficits reflect all sorts of factors unrelated to trade policy – from population size and wealth to differences in resource endowments and comparative advantages, all the way to idiosyncratic preferences for certain products over others. That’s why there’s nothing inherently bad or unsustainable about bilateral deficits.

But Trump has believed otherwise for as long as he’s been a public person. In his view, if a country spends less on goods from America than Americans spend on its goods, the US is necessarily getting “ripped off.” The problem is that by targeting all bilateral trade deficits, his new tariffs punish the world’s smallest, poorest nations like Lesotho and Madagascar with crippling duties for being unable to spend as much on Tesla Cybertrucks and Boeing jets as 340 million fantastically wealthier Americans spend on their diamonds and vanilla. Yet the core reason these countries have trade deficits with America is not because they protect or discriminate against US exports but because they’re poor – something Trump’s punitive tariffs will make worse.

Trump’s tariffs were never about reciprocity or unfair trade practices. Nor are they intended to force other countries to lower their trade barriers and ultimately lead to freer trade, as some Trump allies insist. Otherwise, Trump wouldn’t have levied a 10% duty on countries with which the US has balanced trade and even bilateral surpluses. Trump’s tariffs also entirely ignore the growing trade in services, where the United States is the world’s export powerhouse to the tune of over $1 trillion a year and runs persistent surpluses with much of the world – $295 billion in 2024. If other countries applied Trump’s same “fairness” standard to the US services trade surplus, the “reciprocal” tariffs levied on American services would average 13%.

Decoupling by design

The conclusion is inescapable: The president is committed to walling America off from the world in order to reduce bilateral trade deficits dramatically while using tariff revenue to fund his tax cuts and spending plans. As Vice President JD Vance explained, Trump “believes in economic self-sufficiency.”

The White House hopes the tariffs will incentivize consumers to “buy American” and companies to build factories in the United States. But tariffs could only succeed at reshoring manufacturing over the long term, and only by making imported goods and inputs permanently more expensive for US households and producers. And are there really many Americans willing to forgo relatively well-paid, air-conditioned jobs to sew sneakers and t-shirts in garment factories? If not, what’s the point of tariffs against poorer countries like Bangladesh that specialize in low-value-added industries? The same goes for tariffs on countries that export things that the US can’t make more of at home – think coffee beans, tropical fruits, critical minerals, gemstones, and the like.

History is littered with failed import substitution attempts. Broad-based tariffs are likelier to raise prices, reduce product variety, and hurt US businesses than to lead to a “golden age” of American manufacturing. If the administration expected tariffs to reshore industrial production, it couldn’t anticipate raising the trillions of dollars in tariff revenue its fiscal plans rely on.

The cost of ‘America alone’

There’s no sugarcoating it: Even if he has rolled it back partially, Trump’s pursuit of autarky (aka economic self-sufficiency) is the most destructive economic own goal in recent history, akin to what the British did with Brexit but on a global scale. My friend Larry Summers told me on GZERO Worldthat it’s the “worst, most consequential self-inflicted wound in US economic policy” since World War II.

Global supply chains will be disrupted. Americans will be forced to pay more for their goods, eroding their purchasing power. Businesses’ costs will increase, too, reducing their productivity and driving up prices further. As sticker shock depresses consumer spending, business activity, and exports, unemployment and bankruptcies will rise, and the US may tip into recession – especially if other countries retaliate with tariffs of their own. And that’s before you get to the high, persistent uncertainty about both the path and the end-state of policy inherent to the Trump administration, which will weigh on long-term investment and growth whether or not the 90-day tariff pause is extended.

Dug in

Many will see today’s pause as evidence that Trump is sensitive to political and economic fallout and imagine he’ll back off the remainder of the tariff wall once the pain grows intolerable. After all, launching the largest tax hike in modern US history is a risky bet, and polls already show that very few Americans favor the move. As tariffs increase prices and slow the economy, voters will blame Trump for making them worse off, and Republicans will suffer in the 2026 midterm elections.

But Trump’s political pain tolerance is higher than most think. Unlike eight years ago, he can’t run for president again (despite what he may claim). At 78, he cares largely about using whatever time he has left to cement his legacy. Having overcome defeat in 2020, two impeachments, multiple criminal convictions, and near assassination to win both the popular vote and the electoral college, Trump is convinced he has a revolutionary mandate to do everything he wants at home and abroad. “He’s at the peak of just not giving a f--- anymore,” a White House official told the Washington Post. “Bad news stories? Doesn’t give a f---. He’s going to do what he’s going to do.”

Trump also faces far fewer constraints than during his first term. Not only has the president consolidated full control over the Republican Party, but he has surrounded himself with people whose main qualification is unconditional loyalty. The Signalgate scandal confirmed that Trump’s cabinet members and senior staffers are unprepared to give him their honest advice or check his most disruptive impulses. With policymaking feedback loops broken and long-standing checks and guardrails on executive power being eroded, he may well double down on his failed policies rather than pivot.

Faced with the prospect of sustained American protectionism, most countries will intensify their efforts to “de-risk” from the United States (though it will be as hard as it sounds) and diversify their economic ties with the rest of the world. While in the near term many will put up protectionist measures against Chinese goods escaping US tariffs and flooding their markets, even strategic US allies in Europe and Asia will be pushed to start reluctantly hedging toward Beijing in the medium to long term. American interests and global influence will be damaged accordingly.

The historian Arnold Toynbee famously observed that civilizations die by suicide, not murder. Trump’s “liberation” of America from the greatest engine of peace and prosperity the world has ever seen – globalization, not to be confused with globalism – is the kind of self-destruction Toynbee warned about.

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