Introducing…the Teebie-geebie world

The world sadly lacks a simple word for the immense wave of complications caused by the Trump election, Brexit and all the likely knock-ons from them both. Here’s our suggestion.

Almost twenty years ago, British politics was transfixed by a visceral feud between Tony Blair and his finance minister (“Chancellor of the Exchequer” we call him here) Gordon Brown, over when Blair was going to honour  a deal they’d made a few years earlier that Brown would replace Blair as Prime Minister after Blair had been in office for a few years.

Their almost perpetually cool relationship often turned into days of complete non-cooperation: days when the machinery of government practically seized up. Blair’s Press Secretary described such days as a “TB-GB days”.

We liked that: a polite way of referring to the near chaos their mutual hostility was inflicting on the country.

Our industry’s being hit differently by the T&B phenomenon  – but, once we know the specifics of what it’s going to mean, it’ll be just as messy for the global garment industry as those TB-GB days were for governing Britain. And it’s already inducing serious mental stress among both those in favour of Trump or Brexit as those opposing. Not to mention those of us who simply want to work out what’s going to happen.

So welcome the Teebie-geebies.

Our term of art for the effect on garment traders’ mental state of discussing, or thinking about, the effect of Trump and/or Brexit and/or any other convulsion that might hit us in a similar way. And for the wave of changes they’re gong to create over the next few years.