America is now an unstable emerging market

America under president Donald Trump is an emerging market (EM). That's my takeaway from the last few days of tariff chaos and its fallout. When I first raised this idea last October, I pointed out that emerging markets are often characterised by uncertain economics, corrupt politics, institutions that are too weak to enforce democratic norms, violence and social polarisation. The US has been heading fast in that direction since 2016, for reasons we know all too well, though asset prices and borrowing rates hadn't yet reflected it. Instead, we frequently saw US equities and currency rising during periods of political…