US now key driver of global risk — and China stands to benefit: Eurasia group chief

President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping talk as they leave after a bilateral meeting at Gimhae International Airport in Busan, South Korea, October 30, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

An expert in global political risk ripped President Donald Trump in a new interview with the New York Times, calling him the "principal driver" of chaos and instability in the world, and accusing him of handing power to China in his race to ditch allies.

Ian Bremmer is a prominent American political scientist and the founder of Eurasia Group, with a focus on global risk. On Tuesday, the Times published an extensive interview with him conducted for a podcast by reporter Ezra Klein, in which he explained why Trump has become the main source of political strife and instability in the world, while noting that, in the beginning, he was merely a symptom of those same issues.

"I would say he’s first and foremost a symptom, not a cause, of trends that have been coming in the United States for a long time," Bremmer said, when pressed about what Trump represents overall. "American people who believe that for various reasons the political system does not represent them adequately, that something about it is broken and so needs someone who is going to shake it up, who isn’t going to be an establishment figure."

Likening the situation under Trump in the U.S. to the conditions that caused the collapse of the Roman Empire, Bremmer said that the country is driving massive global uncertainty and chaos out of a disinterest in being "dependable" or involved with longtime allies.

"We don’t want to be dependable," Bremmer said about the new American government mindset under Trump. "We don’t want to be there for the Ukrainians or for the Europeans in helping Ukraine. We don’t want to be there for Taiwan. We’ll make that a negotiation with the Chinese. We don’t want to be there for the Japanese or the South Koreans. You guys should be doing that stuff yourselves. We’re not going to be the architects of free trade. Everybody else should have to come and invest in the United States, because we’re the big power and you guys have been taking advantage of us, and we don’t even want to have the best talent from all over the world because we already have the Americans and that’s what really matters. So you guys just do whatever you want."

He added: "Those things are what is driving the geopolitical risk in the world today. The United States is the principal driver of geopolitical uncertainty in the world today. Trump and the Americans are driving it. They’re driving it with tariffs and industrial policy. They’re driving it with the war in Iran. They’re driving it with the lack of predictability with the Europeans. They’re driving it with the change to the structures and the rules and the norms inside the world’s largest market."

Bremmer further argued that Trump's push to abandon key alliances and partnerships is leaving a massive power vacuum in the global system, and it is one that China is already working to fill. This, he explained, could be seen when China declined Trump's invitation to join his already-stalled "Board of Peace" initiative.

"Why would they say no? Well, because the Chinese were like: If you guys are going to pull out of the U.N., we’ll just be the most powerful country influencing the United Nations," he explained. "If you guys are pulling out of the World Health Organization, we’ll increase the amount we donate every year to the W.H.O. We’ll be the people making those decisions."

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