The child of a globalised world, I grew up with Chinese-made smartphones and problematic fast fashion

At the beginning of this month, Donald Trump's "liberation day" tariffs sent markets into a tailspin. The Nobel Prize-winning American economist Paul Krugman let out a despairing howl: "America created the modern world trading system," he said, later adding that "Donald Trump burned it all down". Meanwhile, as the US president and his coterie of advisers took a sledgehammer to global economic shibboleths, I wondered, "how to make this about me?" On the evening of liberation day, I stood in a garden with some friends. Among them was an arch-conservative. He defended the tariffs and made the case for economic…