Trump is the new Black Swan—and this may herald the end of the American empire

In The Black Swan, author Nassim Nicholas Taleb famously invokes the story of Umberto Eco’s vast 30,000-book library—a collection less about boasting of what one has read and more about confronting the vast expanse of what one has yet to read and know. Taleb’s point is disarmingly simple: The real value lies in the unread, the unknown, and the unpredicted. “The more you know, the larger the rows of unread books,” writes Taleb, echoing Eco’s sentiment.

Taleb’s logic is simple: Our greatest risk lies in overvaluing what we think we know, while history is often rewritten by the improbable, the unknown. After all, a single Black Swan sighting in 17th-century Australia shattered centuries of belief that all swans were white. All it takes is one unforeseen outlier to unravel a worldview.

From world wars to pandemics, from market crashes to political upheavals, history’s course is repeatedly altered—and transformed—by such rare, outlier events. Today, there is a new entry on this list: Donald J Trump. His second term has not only disrupted expectations—it has upended the world order.

Donald ‘Bully’ Trump

Trump’s second term has proven far more tumultuous than his first. His “America First” agenda now functions less as policy and more as a wrecking ball aimed at the post-war multilateral system. Worse, it’s also a personal vendetta machine where Trump’s personal whims and fancies become the state policy.

There is a strong feeling in the US that the post-war multilateral trading system it built and maintained for so long is no longer serving its purpose. Its political class increasingly views it as tilted in favour of emerging powers—chiefly China and Bharat—that have leveraged trade liberalisation to their own advantage. Add to that the dollar’s gradual erosion as the world’s unrivalled reserve currency, and Washington’s mood has shifted from rule-based leadership to disruptive retrenchment.

Against this backdrop, Trump has wielded tariffs as geopolitical weapons rather than economic tools. His 50 per cent tariff on Brazilian goods, for instance, has been less about trade balance (the US actually runs a surplus with Brazil) and more about Trump’s personal equations with Jair Bolsonaro, the embattled former Brazilian president facing coup-plotting charges. Likewise, his additional 25 per cent tariff on Bharat (taking the overall tariff to 50 per cent) for purchasing Russian oil wilfully ignores the fact that China, not Bharat, is the largest buyer, besides overlooking American as well as European trade with Russia itself.

Trump imposed tariffs on Bharat not because it refused to open its markets, but because he wanted headline-grabbing concessions to brandish his strongman image before the Make America Great Again (MAGA) constituency. The Trumpian inflexibility was unnecessary and uncalled for. Bharat, after all, was among the first countries to send its delegation to finalise a trade deal. After a series of intense talks, a middle ground was found where Bharat agreed to open some sectors, and the American delegation was largely satisfied with the results. But Trump wanted more concessions and sought splashy financial commitments. He coupled this with a dubious claim of brokering a Bharat-Pakistan ‘ceasefire’, apparently positioning himself for a Nobel Peace Prize nomination even at the cost of crossing New Delhi’s long-held diplomatic redline.

The Modi Factor

Things would have still gone the Trump way. But then, to his misfortune, the US President has encountered a resurgent Bharat that has undergone a major transformation in the past one decade—from being primarily a soft power to an assertive strategic actor with both economic and military weight. Operation Sindoor—a swift, three-day military manoeuvre that cornered a nuclear-armed adversary—showed a willingness to act where even major powers tread cautiously. Trump, in its characteristic haughtiness, singularly failed to recognise the Narendra Modi phenomenon.

For Washington, the assumption was that Bharat would bend under pressure and yield on sensitive sectors like agriculture and dairy. Instead, New Delhi countered with its own diplomatic moves: National Security Advisor Ajit Doval immediately rushed to Moscow, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar is slated for a Kremlin visit soon, and President Vladimir Putin is expected to arrive in Delhi soon. Simultaneously, Prime Minister Modi is visiting China later this month, and there is buzz in diplomatic circles that Xi Jinping may reciprocate the visit by the end of the year.

These moves are more than symbolic. They show that Bharat is no longer averse to playing global hardball if pushed into a corner.

What has further alarmed the US is the fact that Brics—comprising Bharat, Russia, China, Brazil, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Indonesia, and the United Arab Emirates—has rarely been more active. Talks of de-dollarisation, once a fringe discussion, are now openly on the table. If realised, such a shift could deliver a body blow to America’s economic dominance, undermining one of the pillars of its global influence.

The Trumpian Black Swan

Trump and Modi were supposed to work in tandem, but the former’s egotistical, narcissistic tendencies pulled them apart. Both leaders are unconventional, both relish defying expectations, and both operate with a mix of calculated risks and personal conviction. Yet their visions are not aligned. Trump’s disruptive instincts are transactional, subjective, and short-term, shaped more often than not by personal likes and dislikes, while Modi’s are strategic, objective, and long-horizon, with the interest of the nation being paramount. The result: A breakdown in Bharat-US ties that had been steadily deepening since the early 2000s.

The stakes extend beyond bilateral tensions. If de-dollarisation gains traction, especially under the stewardship of Brics, it could alter the fundamentals of global finance. America’s financial dominance through institutions such as the IMF and World Bank would be severely compromised. And if Bharat sustains its economic and military rise, it could emerge as a decisive “swing state” in 21st-century geopolitics.

For Trump, the danger lies in overplaying his hand—alienating friends and partners to the point where they actively seek to build alternatives to American leadership. Trump, with his so-called tariff war, has signed the death pact for Pax Americana. As for Modi, the challenge is in managing the risks of new alliances and partnerships. China, especially, despite standing in Bharat’s support in recent weeks, remains an area of concern.

The geopolitical chessboard is set, the pieces are in motion—and the ending, as always, will largely be dictated by the unexpected. The fog may clear a bit after the much-anticipated Trump-Putin meeting in Alaska on Friday. But what is certain is that Donald Trump has arrived in his second term as a Black Swan. The world won’t be same again. And in all likelihood, it would mark the beginning of the end of the American empire as we know it today.

Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.