How Trump lost all his cards: economist

U.S. President Donald Trump and U.S. Vice President JD Vance with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House Oval Office on February 28, 2025 (The White House/YouTube/Wikimedia Commons)

Economist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman has pinpointed a series of events that have led to the rest of the world seeing America as “inessential.”

Just weeks after President Donald Trump was sworn into his second term in office, he held a televised Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, during which he and his top administration officials berated the leader fending off Russian President Vladimir Putin’s illegal war.

“You don’t have the cards right now,” Trump told Zelenskyy. But according to Krugman, Zelenskyy has “quite a few cards, while Trump has far fewer cards than he imagined.”

Krugman calls that Oval Office dressing-down “a spectacle that shamed America,” with Trump “engaging in petty bullying of the leader of a nation fighting for its life against tyranny.”

The Oval Office attack was just the start of what would make the world start to rethink its relationship to the U.S.

Trump then cut off all financial aid to Ukraine and blocked weapons sales to the battered nation — even when other nations were paying the bill.

Trump later met with Putin, where, “as the Russians see it, he offered to broker a deal that would give Russia control of a crucial fortress belt on Ukrainian soil.”

Krugman calls that “a shocking betrayal of a democracy fighting for its freedom — and, in so doing, fighting for the freedom of Europe as a whole.”

And while 18 GOP senators Thursday voted to restore aid to Ukraine, against the will of their leadership, should that bill come to Trump’s desk, it is doubtful he would sign it.

Despite Trump’s abandonment of Ukraine, Ukraine turned the war in its favor, and by doing so, taught the world a lesson.

“Before Trump, we were also a nation almost universally regarded as essential,” writes Krugman. “Nations believed that they needed access to U.S. banks to do business, access to U.S. markets to prosper, access to U.S. weapons to defend themselves.”

“But by breaking decades’ worth of international agreements — not to mention threatening allies and betraying Ukraine — Trump quickly forfeited the world’s trust.”

Trump “failing so spectacularly against Iran, a far weaker military power,” has also “dispelled much of the world’s fear,” Krugman says.

The world is “managing economically” despite Trump’s tariffs and his abandonment of Ukraine — and Ukraine is “surviving despite Trump’s attempt to cut it off at the knees,” says Krugman, revealing that America is “much less essential than everyone assumed.”

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