Make no mistake, global markets really did change in 2025. American exceptionalism may never be the same again.
You have to poke around to see this clearly. On the face of it, US stocks took a hit in April, when President Donald Trump tariffed all of planet Earth, and rebounded when he backed down a week or so later, ending the year up by about 16 per cent. What’s not to like?
True believers in the notion that the US has won at capitalism will tell you this proves that orthodoxy and institutions have prevailed, and we can just get back to the normal state of the world, where American assets are all that matters. For US investors, based in US dollars, that is fair enough. But the rest of the world is now clearly looking at the country’s markets through an entirely new lens.