Already angry with the US Federal Reserve for failure to cut interest rates as he would like, he might also strip this pillar of the economic establishment of its independence, thereby endangering the dollar’s core position in the global payments system as well as the US’s ability to service its debts.

Europe’s biggest surplus economy, Germany, has abandoned its debt brake to spend hundreds of billions of euros more on defence and infrastructure renewal, while China plans a significant fiscal loosening to help boost endemically poor consumer spending.

Trump’s wrecking ball has also galvanised the rest of the G7 into thinking about alternative trading alliances, a development that could ironically end up lowering barriers to trade in the world beyond the walled garden of Trump’s America.

Sadly, it’s going to take a long time for the US president’s vandalism to bring about the more balanced global economy one would wish for, and in the meantime there’s going to be substantial collateral damage. But it would certainly help address myriad festering complaints and embedded economic instabilities if that’s the result.