Trump’s economy of distrust: Fiduciary epistemic collapse in political economy

This paper situates America’s present political and economic turmoil—brought to international attention by Joel Suss in the Financial Times (Opinion – Free Lunch, 26 October 2025)—within a deeper epistemic crisis. It argues that the paralysis of U.S. governance and markets is not merely institutional or ideological but fiduciary: a collapse of trust across civic, governmental, and corporate domains. Extending Suss’s diagnosis of “polarisation paralysis,” the paper identifies the underlying pathology as epistemic clientelism—a systemic exchange of recognition for conformity that corrodes autonomy, cooperation, and innovation. Drawing on the Relational Theory of Epistemic Clientelism (Kahl, 2025e), The Newborn’s First Cry as Epistemic Claim (Kahl, 2025d), and Epistemic Humility and the Transposition of Ethical Duties into Epistemic Duties (Kahl, 2025g), the study synthesises psychology, philosophy, and governance to explain how dissonance-intolerance becomes the economic motor of distrust. Through this lens, partisan gridlock, policy uncertainty, and corporate risk aversion appear as symptoms of fiduciary breach—the failure of institutions to act as epistemic trustees. The paper concludes by proposing a framework of fiduciary epistemic stewardship—anchored in candour, humility, and pluralism—as a civic and economic remedy for rebuilding trust in the American polity and, by extension, in liberal democracies worldwide.