Nobel Prize winner Robinson: 'US risks economic collapse'

Following verbatim the theory with which British-American academic James Robinson won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics, the Trump administration's policies risk leading the United States to collapse. This is because 'history teaches us that long-term growth is based on innovation, which can only develop in societies founded on inclusive institutions and policies'.

'It is too early to say whether the choices of the current American administration will lead the country to collapse, as happened to the Soviet Union and several African states,' Robinson argued at the Trento Festival of Economics. 'What is certain is that for decades the United States has been a magnet for new talent, it has consistently attracted the best minds; think for example of where Elon Musk or Steve Jobs' parents came from. Now a kind of antagonism is being created and this could create a disastrous problem, a loss of talent that could have a serious impact on American innovation and growth in the long term'.

The alarm - with profound implications for the world economy - froze the large audience of students, lecturers and families in the room to listen to the economist in connection from his University of Chicago. Already in another panel, the director of Harvard Entrepreneurs and founder of Physis Investment, Stefania Di Bartolomeo, had expressed 'strong fears about the loss of democracy in the United States, more than about tariffs'.

The alarm, however, was diluted into a wishful thinking on the part of the economist. "Donald Trump is a pragmatic person and when he sees and understands the consequences of his actions and choices he may back down; however, it is difficult to predict now what he will do," Robinson said. For the time being, one has to take note of the "American institutional crisis", the "attack on liberal institutions, including universities" and the fact that basically Trump and his shadow advisor Elon Musk believe that a government does "more damage than anything else and so the more streamlined it is and the more it lets the private sector do, the better."

On the other hand, however, "Trump is a symptom of a deep and widespread malaise among Americans, which is very alarming: the inclusive institutions of the previous democratic administration have shown that they no longer work in the United States, that they do not bring widespread benefits," said the Nobel laureate. In the course of his lecture, the academic showed some thirty slides full of ad hoc elaborations for the Trento Festival of Economics, focusing on the graph showing "the disillusionment of 85% of Americans with the liberal democratic system, carried out by politicians who do not care what people think" and above all on the graph highlighting "the collapse of generalised prosperity in the US, where since the 1970s only those who have gone to university can expect to improve their income. "This is very serious," Robinson argued, "and is the basis for the success of the Make America Great Again mantra, which is in a sense a reaction to the lack of inclusion seen in recent decades and is a failure of inclusive institutions based on innovation.