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The Arrogance of Trump’s Foreign-Policy Critics
Niall Ferguson
January 25, 2026

I never cease to be amazed by the high conviction of so many journalists and academic commentators in their judgments on President Donald Trump. This has been especially striking during and after the Davos World Economic Forum. The impressive thing is that the same people rush to condemn Trump (and his defenders) in just the same way as they have been doing for 10 years. They remain unshakably convinced of their own superior intelligence. Three things are especially striking. First, they never look back and ask: “How good were my previous judgments of Trump? How did I do last year? Did I anticipate how much Trump would achieve in the first 100 days? Did I wrongly predict that his tariffs would crater the economy and cause inflation? Did I fail to anticipate the air strikes on Fordow? Did I fail to foresee the deal that got the Israeli hostages out of Gaza?” And so on. READ MORE