How Donald Trump is making it clear the world faces four years of 'constant chaos'

“This is the next four years. Shifting goalposts and constant chaos, putting our economy at risk,” wrote centre-right Canadian politician Doug Ford, after Donald Trump mentioned he would impose 25 per cent tariffs on "any steel coming into the United States” while travelling to watch the American football Super Bowl.

The top three suppliers of steel to the US are Brazil, Canada and Mexico, so this represents a re-escalation in hostilities with the latter two after Trump postponed his threatened 25 per cent tariffs on almost all goods coming from both.

In Britain, Gareth Stace, director-general of UK Steel, warned the tariffs would be a "devastating blow" for the industry, putting more than £400 million-worth of exports at risk. Home Office minister Dame Angela Eagle said the government would have to "wait and see whether the president gets more specific about what he meant by that comment". Indeed.

Donald Trump shows off a map of his 'Gulf of America' on board Air Force One while flying to New Orleans for the Super Bowl (Picture: Roberto Schmidt) | AFP via Getty Images

Meanwhile, the people of Gaza learned, via a Fox News interview, that they “wouldn’t” have a right to return to their homes under Trump’s plan to “buy and own” the territory, remove its entire population and rehouse them “a little bit away from where they are”. It’s not quite clear who will be living in Trump’s “Riviera of the Middle East”, but it won’t be them.

Exactly how the US President aims to move some two million people, against their will, to a destination unknown is similarly uncertain. However, ethnic cleansing, if that’s what Trump has in mind, is seldom a peaceful process.

During Trump’s flight from Florida to New Orleans for the Super Bowl, he also showed off another of his attempted ‘territorial grabs’: a map of his self-proclaimed “Gulf of America”, which focussed on the northern half of the Gulf of Mexico, so as to exclude Mexico as much as possible.

Unlike his talk about taking over Gaza, Greenland, the Panama Canal and Canada, this may only be symbolic. But it is a deeply meaningful sign of the state of mind of a man who, as Doug Ford pointed out, will be the world’s most powerful man for four more years. Heaven help us all.