America

I had thought that having to be inaugurated indoors would have cramped Donald Trump’s style. Not so. The rhetoric with which he would have tried to fill the chilly air on the steps of the Capitol was even more exciting inside the crowded Rotunda. Only feet away from Trump, poor Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and behind them the Clintons shrank in their places, like captives paraded in ancient Rome after a military triumph. I experienced contradictory reactions.

Swing states Where would Canada and Greenland rank if they became US states? – Canada would be, by far, the largest state. In fact, at 3,855,100 square miles it is marginally larger than the current US (3,796,742 square miles). – It would also be the largest state by population, with 41.5m inhabitants, putting it ahead of California (39.4m). – It would have the third largest GDP, at $2.58tn, behind California ($4.08tn) and Texas ($2.69tn). – Unless Canada also joined, Greenland would become the largest US state, at 836,330 square miles, ahead of Alaska (665,384 square miles). – It would be the smallest in terms of population, its 56,600 inhabitants less than a tenth of the current least-populous state, Wyoming (587,618).

New year predictions are always rash, but it feels as though one aspect of the story of 2025 can already be written. The gap between the economic fortunes of the US and Europe will continue to widen – and Britain will be trapped very much on the European side of the divide. In three weeks’ time the US will have a new leader, one who will unashamedly put the interests of US business first. Donald Trump’s threat of punitive tariffs may or may not be realised (as in his first term, it could prove to be a negotiating tool to press for the removal of restrictions on US exports and an end to currency manipulation by China). But several things are certain. A Trump-led US will not be adopting a growth-destroying social democratic model.

Home The Labour government announced a ‘Plan for Change’ that it refused to call a reset. Sir Chris Wormald was named Cabinet Secretary. In his Guildhall speech at the Lord Mayor’s banquet, Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, said that ‘the idea that we must choose between our allies, that somehow we’re with either America or Europe, is plain wrong’. He said ‘we must continue to back Ukraine’ against Vladimir Putin as something ‘deeply in our self-interest’. With the arrival of another 122 people on 1 December, more than 20,000 had crossed the Channel in small boats since Labour entered office.

This column comes to you from Atlanta, Georgia, where but for one giant ‘Trump Stands Up For Families’ billboard and some Harris-Walz placards in the leafier suburbs, you would hardly know there had just been an election. I was hoping to report a whiff of teargas after a contested result, but no. Urban Atlanta voted for Harris but rural Georgia was so solid for Trump that nothing was left to argument. The chattering classes on the east and west coasts may be traumatised, but for plainer folks – with a sense of relief that no violent disruption kicked off – it’s back to daily life and business as usual. Or is that, I wondered, a false observation from conversations with my conference group here? ‘No, you’re right,’ a Washington economist told me over breakfast grits.