Court Painter tasked the studio resident scribe Chatterley Grandiouse Penelope Tinkerer (Chat GPT) to connect the Trump imposed tariffs and their impact on the global trade order,through the lens of the global village concept:
Chieftain & Drowning America
Tariffs in the Global Village: How Trump’s Trade War Proved the World Is More Interconnected Than Ever
In 1970, Saturday Review noted a shift that would come to define the modern age: “There are no boundaries in a global village. All problems will become so intimate as to be one’s own.” Inspired by media theorist Marshall McLuhan’s concept of the global village, the phrase reflected a growing awareness that technology was shrinking the world—turning distant events into local concerns and foreign crises into personal ones. This interconnectedness also reveals its vulnerabilities, as seen in President Trump’s current unilateral trade actions: an unrestrained, autocratic chieftain—unimpeded by the constitutional structure of his republic—can transform a chieftain in a global village into a rogue actor, instantly upending the established world trade order.
The tariffs, far from being a domestic trade balance lever, became a global disruptor in the hands of an irrational chieftain.
America & Black Hole
This isn’t just about economics. It is a test of the very idea the Saturday Review warned about: that in a global village, no decision is isolated. Boundaries on a map may still exist, but the systems that connect countries — through agreed upon values, finance, technology, and trade — do not recognize physical borders in the same way and remain instantly vulnerable to the irrational whims of an out of control entitled Orange Menace Chieftain unrestrained by democratic norms.
America at Event Horizon
Marshall McLuhan & Quote
Court Painter & Marshall McLuhan quote