The United States is dismantling the global order

The U.S. withdrawal from 66 international organizations triggers a structural shock that dismantles the postwar global architecture.

The decision of the Trump administration marks a moment of rupture: the deliberate unravelling of the mechanisms that have made functional globalization possible over recent decades.

The executive order signed in Washington, through which the United States exits dozens of multilateral entities-including key UN agencies-does not merely express an "America First” policy. It constitutes a declaration of war on the systemic coherence that has underpinned the global economy since 1945.

Global fragmentation and the explosion of friction costs

The degree of globalization is not measured solely by trade volumes or financial flows, but by the fluidity of trust between jurisdictions. Multilateral organizations have functioned as factories of predictability: they transformed unpredictable political bargaining into manageable institutional routine.

By withdrawing, the United States does not eliminate a bureaucratic burden; instead, it introduces a global tax of institutional redundancy, paid by the rest of the world.

1.The first consequence is normative entropy. Regulations fragment, and multinational companies are forced to operate in a landscape of divergent standards-from public health (the World Health Organization) to climate policy (the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change). Compliance costs do not rise gradually, but exponentially, as institutional schizophrenia sets in.

2.The second consequence is the price of opacity. Exiting agencies such as the United Nations Population Fund or UN Women reduces access to standardized data on demographic, social, and environmental risks. Uncertainty translates directly into higher financing costs, relocation decisions, and the shortening of supply chains.

3.Finally, geopolitical risk is internalized in the price of capital. Every cross-border investment must include an additional premium for political volatility induced by the disintegration of the multilateral system. The Cost of Friction becomes a central economic variable.

The destruction of interest rate convergence

Interest rate convergence-a sign of integrated capital markets and a shared assessment of risk-was possible only in a low-friction environment with shared norms. The fragmentation driven by Washington invalidates this assumption.

A) First, risk premiums diverge. Capital is no longer perfectly fungible. Divergent national policies introduce structural distortions, and interest rates-the price of risk-separate along jurisdictional lines. The very idea of a global "risk-free” rate disappears.

B) Second, the transmission of monetary policy erodes. Without a common institutional foundation, coordination among central banks becomes impossible. Monetary policies will be calibrated defensively, in response to local shocks rather than global equilibria.

C) Finally, capital becomes captive. Faced with uncertainty, investment retreats into regional blocs perceived as safe. Liquidity becomes a national strategic resource, not a global one. Peripheral economies pay the price through a structural increase in the cost of capital and a widening of interest rate differentials vis-à-vis the centers of power.

A world taxed by its own fragmentation

The decision of the United States is not about marginal budgetary savings. It is about reintroducing uncertainty as a fundamental cost component. The world is entering a phase in which the Cost of Friction dominates the profit equation, and convergence-the great dream of the 1990s-becomes a historical relic.

The market will not negotiate this reality.

It will price it-brutally.