U.S. President Donald Trump salutes during the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 25, 2026.
As the war with Iran drags on, now suspended in a ceasefire as the combatants attempt to organize negotiations, the Nobel laureate economist Joseph E. Stiglitz has a harsh assessment of the results so far. According to Stiglitz, President Donald Trump’s decision to wage war against Iran was a ‘calamitous’ mistake, the consequences of which have been war crimes, death, and the destruction of the global economy.
“No decision is more important than waging war against another country. Yet the United States has done exactly that without even a nod to its own system of checks and balances and reasoned deliberation,” writes Stiglitz. “The disastrous result is now clear: America is once again embroiled in a Middle East war that has already cost thousands of lives — mostly civilians — and in which it has almost certainly committed multiple war crimes.”
What’s more, Stiglitz asserts that the longer the war lasts, “the greater the damage will be. But even if the war ends quickly, the effects will linger. After all, critical supply chains have already been disrupted, and oil and gas production facilities destroyed. Most estimates suggest that repairs will take years.”
The economic damage comes on the heels of Trump’s tariffs, which, along with the war, have contributed to rising inflation. With the world “already facing an affordability crisis that US policies have made worse, the risk now is that central bankers everywhere will either raise interest rates or at least slow the pace at which they were lowering them.” As a result, what economic gains were made as the world recovered from COVID have been lost.
This is going to exacerbate the affordability crisis, which will in turn worsen the housing and credit situation. At the same time, “Trump’s regressive tax cuts for billionaires and corporations now in force, the US has less fiscal space to buffer the disruptions he has caused.” What’s more, “Trump’s claim that the US will benefit as a net oil exporter is nonsense. Yes, Exxon will benefit, but US consumers pay prices that are set globally — and that have risen substantially.” So Americans will pay at the pump while big oil sees soaring profits.
Stiglitz says there is little cause for optimism, concluding, “Yet another nail has been added to the coffin of the peaceful, borderless world that our forebearers sought to build after World War II. Under Trump, the country that laid the foundations of that world is now dismantling it… And with democracy in the US in such a weakened state, the human errors and their consequences are piling up fast.”
