In 1977, John Kenneth Galbraith hosted a BBC series about the world economy that was called “The Age of Uncertainty.” The title was chosen to distinguish those economically uncertain times from the certainties of the 19th century. Nearly 50 years later, uncertainty is everywhere.
In a June 2025 New Republic article titled “Uncertainty is the New Trump Tariff — and Everybody Loses,” Kyle Handley wrote that trade rules are now “unknowable,” calling President Donald Trump’s trade decisions “coin-flipping with global consequences.”
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney used his January address at the Davos summit to declare that the United States — once a certain friend of Canada — could no longer be relied upon. That came after a Trump social media post of a map that showed American flags planted in Canada and Greenland.
Responding to Trump’s bombastic economic threats and coercion, Carney declared a “rupture in the world order” and said Canada must “build a new order that encompasses our values, such as respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
And there are other uncertainties that are giving Americans pause when they check the news. Not a day goes by without Trump somehow shaking our sense of well-being.
Most Americans have always believed that our elections are free and fair, even when their candidate has lost. But Trump continues to claim the 2020 election he lost was somehow fixed. It is a ludicrous lie — disproved by objective analysts and multiple courts — but he keeps telling it, using the FBI last week to sow doubt and seize election records in Georgia.
Trump’s use of the Department of Justice to threaten and prosecute his perceived enemies has given new meaning to the phrase “Trumped up charges.” Always settling scores — often out of the blue — Trump uses the FBI and DOJ to investigate or charge those who have not bent the knee before him. Former FBI Director James Comey and current chair of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell are two high-profile examples.
The Statue of Liberty has always stood for the idea that America is the land of freedom and opportunity. It no longer feels like that. Masked federal agents are rousting American citizens, demanding that Hispanic Americans show their papers and detaining immigrants who have followed the law — not just the bad guys.
Since the Cold War, Americans could be certain the United States and its NATO allies would keep the world safe from demagogues and tyrants. After 9/11, our NATO allies did that by coming to our defense, their soldiers dying for America. But Trump has cozied up to Vladimir Putin and has suggested that America may abandon our NATO partners.
In a December opinion piece in The Hill called “How President Trump ruined Christmas,” contributor John Mac Ghlionn wrote that while Trump’s poll numbers were plummeting in December, he posted hundreds of messages an hour on Truth Social, including wild conspiracy theories and AI images.
When Americans wanted “peace on Earth,” Ghlionn wrote, they got instead “a man firing off posts like an overcaffeinated teenager locked in a basement with three routers and a grudge.”
Trump’s supporters claim he is consciously using “strategic uncertainty” as a bargaining tactic, that there is a method to this madness, and I suppose it is possible they are right. But here’s one thing that you can still be certain of: If any other president acted like this, Trump and his supporters would be the first to call for the use of the 25th Amendment to replace the president.
