President Donald Trump, following his return to office, has totally blown up the international trade framework and that can only mean bad news for Americans, renowned economist Paul Krugman argued in his email newsletter.

“The world trading system as we knew it lasted for three generations after World War II,” explained Krugman, the winner of the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

Read the full analysis on Substack.

“It was a rules-based system, in which everyone considered the U.S. a reliable, trustworthy partner,” he noted. “But now US economic relations with other nations have turned abusive, and the world is moving toward divorce.”

The outcome?

It “will make Americans measurably poorer,” predicted the economist, who has been a fierce and vocal critic of Trump’s tariff policy.

Krugman’s analysis followed the striking of a free trade agreement between India and the European Union. It demonstrated, the economist said, how “countries are moving, step by step, toward an economic divorce from America.”

It also came, in a further sign of nations distancing themselves from America under Trump, with China and Britain agreeing to increase cooperation.