The Not So Hidden Globe
Trump is saying the quiet parts out loud
I’ve been writing about global underworlds for a while. My first book, The Cosmopolites, was all about the global market for passports; my latest, The Hidden Globe, is about the world of legal loopholes (it’s currently on sale for $20!)
Still, I never could have predicted that my obsessions (that an editor once called “wacky”) would become headline news day after day after day... not in Guernsey, or Comoros, or St. Kitts, but in the United States of America.
So let’s make a list to see where we are today. The Trump administration has been in office for barely one fiscal quarter and it has already:
Used Guantanamo Bay for migrant detentions.
Paid El Salvador to detain US deportees in their prisons (with no due process.)
Tried to buy the semi-autonomous Danish territory of Greenland.
Pressured a Hong Kong company to sell its ports adjacent to the Panama Canal, the world’s second-largest free trade zone, to a US investor group.
Announced it would sell “Gold Cards” to foreign investors for $5 million (while driving Americans to make their own Plan B)
Kicked around ideas to build charter cities (“Freedom Cities”) on federal land.
Proposed turning Gaza into a charter city.
Gutted the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the Corporate Transparency Act.
Challenged birthright citizenship.
Tried to deport green card holders, tried to deport visa holders, and tried to deport people without due process and then—bonus—
refused to turn the plane around when a judge told them to come back by invoking international waters!
In my books and my writing elsewhere, I have reported on versions of these initiatives that have taken place in other countries over the past decade or so: Kuwait denaturalizing its citizens (now 3 percent of the population), China taking over the Lao city of Boten, Australia leasing prisons on Nauru and Manus Island, and of course the sale of citizenship and residence permits, to name just a few examples. Now, it’s all coming back to roost in the U.S.
I’ve been commenting on these moves in The Atlantic, and somewhat belatedly, found a name for this ideology. You can read more at the link, but in a nutshell:
“Trump’s foreign policy treats the nations of the world less as sovereign, independent nations than as sites of arbitrage, evasion, and extraction. Call it “national globalism”: the pursuit of extraterritorial space to advance American interests.”
I’m not in the business of predictions. If I was, I’d be making way more money, for starters. But given my inadvertent track record, what else might be in store for us here in the United States if Trump and his pals keep running the show?
Here is a highly speculative, definitely wacky list:
Deporting people to “third countries”, a la Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda bill. This won’t be facilitated by IOM or other groups that work in resettlement but look more like a bilateral, cash-for-services deal that doesn’t rely on detention centers but is still a pretty raw deal for the people involved.
Buying new island territories, probably in the Pacific. Maybe Chagos? (The American Conservative has already cheekily proposed this.)
Putting foreign citizenship-by-investment schemes out of business to benefit the Gold Card plan instead. I don’t think it’s conspiratorial to point out that a few countries on the proposed ban list (Vanuatu, St. Lucia, St. Kitts, Dominica, Antigua) already sell their citizenship…
American bank secrecy.
Chipping away at the diplomatic immunity of international organizations; possibly even going after the VCCR and definitely trying something weird and nasty with the UN building (remember, Trump put in a bid to renovate it in 2006!)
Ending extraterritorial taxation, to benefit mostly US m/billionaires.
Mining the moon for profit.
On a final note, it’s been a busy few months since The Hidden Globe was published, and I’ve been doing loads of events at bookstores, colleges, and the dreaded Zoom. The reception has been incredible—nothing makes my day like a LinkedIn message from a random finance dude who picked the book up at the Doha airport (I see you, my Gulfie friends!) I also happen to love public speaking, so it’s been really fun to meet readers around the country. Thank you all for reading my work and supporting it how you can. If you wouldn’t mind leaving The Hidden Globe a review on Amazon, that would be great. Every bit helps!
Now that things are calming down a little, I also hope to send out this newsletter a little more frequently. If there’s a topic you’d like my take on, or want to discuss in the chat, let me know and I will make it happen.
I will regret saying this, but I’m an inbox zero freak, and I end up replying to basically everyone who doesn’t sound unhinged… so I hope to hear from you, at least for now!