For decades, political leaders across North America told us that the future was settled.

The Cold War was over. The Soviet Union was no more. Globalization was inevitable, and there’d be McDonalds, Wal-Mart and Starbucks on every corner in Moscow.

Free trade would raise all boats with the high tide of liberal democracy as international institutions would fairly govern disputes through rules rather than through raw power. A free market would deliver prosperity, and with it stability.

This vision became known as the liberal world order. Not merely an economic program thought up in post-WWII think-tanks, it was a world view.

Today, that order is visibly fraying.

The return of Donald Trump to the White House represent more than just another electoral swing in American politics. It symbolizes a broader transformation underway across much of the Western world. The assumptions that underpinned the post-Cold War era are no longer commanding public confidence. The political consensus that governed North America for a generation is breaking apart.

For many observers, the most striking development is the clear growing willingness of the United States itself to depart from the rules-based framework it once championed. Whether on trade, international alliances, diplomacy, or even international aid, it’s become incredibly clear that Washington is willing to act according to immediate national interests rather than established international norms. The world’s chief architect of the liberal international order is no longer interested in nor behaving like it’s most reliable steward.

But it’s important to understand that this crisis did not begin with Donald Trump, nor will it end with him.

The deeper problem is that globalization and neoliberal economics produced far too few winners and far too many losers, and political elites spent decades pretending otherwise. In reality, Trumpism is not the cause of the liberal order’s ongoing crisis, but rather one of it’s consequences. For decades now, both centre-left and centre-right governments adopted and embraced the same basic economic model. With it, factories closed, and laundry lists of public assets sold to private interests. Trade agreements protected capital while workers were told to swallow a bitter pill, all the while, unions were weakened and housing became a wildly speculative asset.

The promise we were sold was that globalization would make everyone richer.

The reality we got was that it made some people extraordinarily rich.

While corporate profits reached record highs, entire communities – especially rural ones – were sacrificed to the demands of international capital. Workers who lost stable employment were told to retrain, yet scolded when asked for better unemployment supports. Young people facing impossible housing costs are scolded by politicians wearing clothing worth more than their monthly pay to just work harder. Families are squeezed time and time again by rising costs, but yet are told that economy is fundamentally healthy because the GDP is growing and the stock market is booming.

Our gains were privatized, the costs…socialized.

Eventually, people noticed.

The political establishment’s response to growing inequality was not to challenge the economic model that produced it. Instead, it doubled down. Every crisis becomes another excuse for further concentration of wealth and power. The 2008 financial crash exposed the fragility of the neoliberal order, yet the institutions responsible for the disaster were rescued while ordinary people absorbed the consequences through austerity, mass unemployment, and further declining public services.

This is the very context in which right-wing populism has emerged.

Across North America and Europe, millions of voters rejected a status quo that had failed them. Lacking a strong and organized left-wing in many countries, much of that anger was captured by nationalist and reactionary movements. Figures like Trump offered a simple explanation for economic insecurity: immigrants, foreign competitors, global institutions, and cultural elites were to blame.

The tragedy is that the diagnosis was largely wrong while the sense of grievance was very much real.

The liberal order’s defenders continue to speak as through it’s ongoing collapse is the result of irrational voters abandoning an otherwise successful system. But people are not rejecting a functioning status quo. They are rejecting decades of declining affordability, precarious work, and economic insecurity.

The liberal world order is not dying because people stopped believing in it. People stopped believing in it because it stopped delivering.

What is increasingly interesting is now it appears that opposition towards neoliberalism is no longer exclusive from the right. Across North America, there are signs that voters are becoming more receptive to democratic socialist politics. Not because they have suddenly become ideological radicals, but because neoliberalism has failed to solve the problems that now dominate everyday life.

We need housing on scale with national demand – not private profit. We need free and accessible healthcare for all, universal from head to toe. We need decent jobs that are unionized and pay at a survivable wage. We need public services that function.

And increasingly, many are concluding that markets alone will not provide them.

To use a recent American example, the recent election of Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City reflects this shift. His campaign hyper-focused on affordability, housing, widespread public investment, and the cost-of-living crisis. Rather than accept neoliberal assumptions, he challenged them directly and openly. His success suggests that there is a growing audience for a new body of politics that treats economic inequality as a political problem rather than an unfortunate side effect of progress.

Canada may very well experience a similar development.

The election of Avi Lewis as leader of the federal New Democratic Party as well as the elevation of Lewis-aligned candidates to internal NDP positions marks a significant break with the cautious managerial politics that have often characterized the Canadian centre-left. Lewis has openly embraced democratic socialism at a time when many political consultants still insist that such language is electorally toxic. His victory reflects a growing recognition that incremental adjustments to a failing economic model are unlikely to satisfy voters looking for a fundamental change.

Whether these movements are ultimately successful remains uncertain.

What is clear is that the old consensus is exhausted.

The architects of neoliberal globalization promised us all stability. Instead, they delivered financial crises, housing crises, declining social mobility, and levels of wealth concentration not seen in generations. They promised that markets would create shared prosperity, yet they created an economy increasingly optimized and organized around asset ownership and rent extraction.

And now, they have the gull to be bewildered that voters are searching for alternatives.

They shouldn’t be.

The liberal world order was never just a simple system of international cooperation. It was also a class project. It redistributed power upward while presenting itself as common sense. For a time, it appeared durable because it generated enough growth to obscure its contradictions.

Those contradictions are now impossible to ignore.

The question facing North America is no longer whether the neoliberal era is ending.

The question we all face is who will inherit the political vacuum it leaves behind.

The right offers nationalism, scapegoating, and technocratic authoritarianism.

The democratic socialist left offers a different possibility: rebuilding democratic control over the economy, strengthening public institutions, and directing society’s immense wealth towards collective needs rather than private accumulation in the hands of a few hundred billionaires.

The old order is collapsing under the weight of its own failures.

The fight over what replaces it has only just begun.