US President Donald Trump, in his inimitable style and thrust, continues to rock the boat globally.

Not only has he unleashed (without, it seems, any consultation, and almost as a parting shot in his joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) his ridiculous ‘cleanse Gaza, develop a riviera front there’ absurdity, he has threatened higher, punitive tariffs on friends, allies and ‘adversaries’ alike, triggering fears of a global trade war.

The former has, as expected, evoked condemnation across the board and the world.

The latter has transpired, at least in the case of Canada and Mexico, as bargaining chips intended to ‘persuade’ both neighbours to negotiate solutions to illegal immigration and trade issues. And let’s not even tarry on Trump’s threats to retake the Panama Canal and rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.

Trump thinks he can strike deals to reverse the decline of the US as a major industrial and trading power, the former having been depleted by globalisation and its concomitant shift of industries abroad, particularly to the lower cost, lower wages developing world, the latter highlighting the trade deficits of the US with most major trading partners, which have become a permanent fact for long.

Is Trump stark, raving mad, as some writers have suggested? I do not flatter myself that my characterisation of him as the Mad Hatter has prompted this description.

In my view, Trump is a sane, albeit extreme........

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