If These Risks Were Real, We’d Be Worried. Happily, They Are Not.

2026 is already a barrage of Trump-fueled geopolitical crises and tariff threats. Markets have barely noticed. Markets are learning that seeming crises are manufactured by Trump and the media in a partnership designed to get your attention and exploit it. The threatened tariffs have been entirely fake – merely Truth Social posts – and the Greenland tariff threat was withdrawn for a “framework of a future deal” that is also fake. If a real deal happens it will involve massive debt-financing, and the alarmist reaction to it will be fake. Trump’s Greenland initiative is not as bizarre as it sounds. Denmark tried to sell it to us once, long ago. The US has a myriad of “possessions,” “territories” and “protectorates” that are part of a time-tested system of global security, acquired in some cases by payment (such as the US Virgin Islands – bought from Denmark!) and in others (such as Hawaii) by outright conquest. It is not clear that Trump’s moves in Venezuela and Greenland raise the risk of similar moves by Russia and China – more likely, they deter them.