This week, in a special experiment, we've gone live on Twitter Spaces.

As Trump's tariffs bite, and the current account deficit zooms to the front of modern political economy, we're revisiting the idea of a new Bancor, a complete resetting of the global monetary system.

This week we scrubbed the decks and sounded the five bell alarm.

Donald Trump had only gone and done it. Tariffs. Thousands of them.

What could the greatest regression from the norms of globalisation since 1945 mean for a show called Multipolarity?

Even better: what would it mean for the world?

With the MAGA base both boisterous and uneasy in the face of this dawning reality, we wargamed out the answers.

Until, at 20:10 local time, news came of a stunning reversal...

Coming up this week: an audio essays special edition. 

Philip and Andrew, going head to head, a half hour each, on two big stories that have a more medium-term feel than the usual weekly news pegs. 

In the red corner, Mr Pilkington takes on the bear market. Is an icy wind coming for global stocks? How it could play out? From the bottoming out of NVIDA to the coming age of tariffs, what are the key triggers? 

Then, Andrew Collingwood will be taking on medium-term Europe. As the US shrinks from its hegemonic duties, will the EU seize the moment, to attempt to federalise through the stalking horse of re-armament? And given recent trends, could this laager mentality also come with a doubling-down on its own unique brand of autocracy?

Was the editor of the Atlantic actually accidentally included in some rangy groupchat among bros that included a denunciation of European defence policy? 

Are you stupid? Have you recently had an aneurysm?

Leaving aside this obvious straw dog, what is Washington actually signalling here? 

Meanwhile, the Chinese, Japanese and South Koreans are getting together to sign declarations of mutual support: pledging increased economic co-operation – and gently letting the whole Taiwan thing slide. 

When nations with rape slaves level of historical beef are making nice, you know something is shifting.

Finally, is Martin Bormann alive and well and living in Argentina? No. But as Milei’s government releases the papers on the Third Reich, the historical mythology of World War 2 is under attack as never before. 

What happens when the post-1945 world order has to deal with the messy reality of the pre-1945 world?   

All coming up this week, only for the people who pay. 

You don’t pay, you don’t get. That’s the brutal economic logic behind 1 in 4 episodes of Multipolarity. Spend five Euros, Pounds or Dollars, and join the beautiful people. Just go to Patreon.com and put in your details. You can cancel any time.

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The British right is starting to fracture on the Ukraine issue. Where once they would reliably be called upon to paint themselves blue and yellow and raise a whip-round down the dog & duck    for more MANPADS – now, as the endgame approaches, a group of the plugged-in are leaving the big tent. The civil war that follows may be its own Donbas. 

Meanwhile, further evidence is in that US firms are quietly reorienting their capital expenditure away from data centres and chips, and towards efficiency gains. Some say this is down to the DeepSeek effect. So will the hardware lite business model this implies end up driving a slow puncture into Silicon Valley?

Finally, have you heard of the Trump Put? A backstop against the crazy risks the Trump regime might be running. One that relies entirely on assuming that at some point the government intervenes to arrest a Wall Street bloodbath. It worked in the Greenspan era. But is this a bungee cord without a tether? 

Tesla is tanking. On the NASDAQ, the Magnificent 7 have become merely the 7. The talk is all of quarterly earnings in Musk towers. But is this just a smokescreen for the fact that DeepSeek has DeepFound Silicon Valley in DeepDooDoo?

Meanwhile, in Europe, the dream of rearmament is still alive and well. Two weeks in, we’ll have a report, direct from the frontlines of an unreachable fantasia.   

Finally, do Jihadis make good pets? For a few Washington and Brussels liberals, they have become the accessory du jour. But after the appalling scenes from Syria this week, well it turns out that befriending beheaders in flatbed trucks might not be such a good idea. More as we get it.

***

You can get exclusive paywalled episodes of Multipolarity on Patreon.

It's 5 bucks a month, and cancellation is easy.

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As the world blows up, again, Andrew Collingwood has a dread cold.

Gavin Haynes fills in as best he can, with a soft Newcastle brogue.

We cover everything - from the rumble in the White House to the cultural amnesia coming up the pike.

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You can get paywalled episodes of Multipolarity on Patreon. https://www.Patreon.com/multipolarity

It's cheap and you can cancel any time.

In Germany, there’s been an election.

And The Reichstag is on fire - with a new cohort of AfD members . 

Will Keiser Merz see this as his opportunity to seize total control? 

After all, on Saturday, the incoming Chancellor decided that Germany can quote go it alone. Whatever that means. Is the real threat to European democracy about to come from besieged Christian Democrats? 

Meanwhile, what exactly is Donald Trump up to? In the past few weeks, America’s Sun King has sprayed the geopolitical flak a mile high. From Gaza-a-lago to dropping his piledriver on Zelensky. 

In four years everyone went from assuming him merely mad to assuming method in all his madness. Still, no one has yet discerned exactly what that method is.

Of course, this is a PayWall edition. So if you’re not feeding us coins, not only will you be left with a vague miasma of guilt, you’ll also be leaving us in 15 minutes time. 

That means leaving without 45 minutes of primo audio in which we reveal, plain as day, the TRUTH of Trump’s grand strategy. 

Would be a hard one to miss out on. You’d really feel kinda bummed. 

A piece of our time: a special edition covering the Vance speech, the Ukraine peace plan, and the EU response.

They say sunlight is the best disinfectant. But what if you’re a germ? As the USA.I.D demolition continues, we’re beginning to see the outlines of what might be a network of real corruption - and it's not just the tinfoil hats saying it. How will the US public deal with having the wool pulled from their eyes? And will the Beltway liberals ever recover? 

Meanwhile, Britain has agreed to the deal of the century. The Mauritians get: £18 billion. We get: to give them a strategically important series of islands. The Chagos saga must already rank as the most tawdry fiasco since Suez. What no one can understand is: why? 

Finally, while it’s retreating from aid, the US imperium is once again reasserting itself over the periphery when it comes to tech. With the Silicon Valley set signed up behind Trumpism, Europe is being asked to bend the knee, not just on market access, but on their much eroded rights to online free speech. What can you say?