Speedrunning Economic Collapse for Funsies

Ryan Broderick on how, with the trade war that Trump’s tariffs has unleashed, we are speedrunning Brexit and other hyper-inflationary financial crises (thread) and Americans may soon find out what happens when US dollars don’t buy anything.

So from my uniquely weird perspective after living in the UK through Brexit, being in India during Modi’s demonetization, and living in Brazil when the real tanked during the Bolsonaro administration, I can confidently say that Americans do not and can not understand how bad this is going to be.

To sort of broadly describe what is about to happen if the Trump admin doesn’t reverse course, we are quickly racing towards a world where not only does our money just not work correctly anymore day to day, but the background radiation of a crumbling economy will become impossible to ignore.

After the Brexit referendum, everything in London just got slightly worse. A year or two in, you could feel it. But that’s because it took five years for the country to actually leave the EU. We’re speedrunning that. In Brazil, prices would change overnight, stores just wouldn’t have stuff.

There’s more; read the whole thing. Broderick was reacting to this brief WSJ piece (archive):

The broad selloff in U.S. stocks and bonds, and the continuing decline in the dollar, represents a “simultaneous collapse in the price of all U.S. assets,” analysts at Deutsche Bank said Wednesday. They warned that “unchartered territory” lies ahead.

- Markets are dedollarizing, they said, citing the lack of evidence that investors are hoarding dollar liquidity— a dynamic that in previous market routs fueled Treasury and U.S. dollar rallies but this time is leading to declines in the prices of both.

- The administration is encouraging the Treasury selloff, they said, in a bid to bring down U.S. asset valuations—a decision they said now is exposing the fact that “reducing bilateral trade imbalances is functionally equivalent to lowering demand for U.S. assets as well.”

- A financial war with China could lie ahead, they conclude, contending that “there is little room now left for an escalation on the trade front” and that “there can be no winner to such a war.”

I’ve been saying since his election that Trump was going to drive the economy into the ditch. This is more like driving it off a cliff.

Tags: 2025 Coup · Donald Trump · economics · politics · Ryan Broderick · USA