Even as dust settles from the US elections, the world is wondering what President Donald Trump means for the world. Given that he said many unorthodox things on the campaign trail, there is a great deal of speculation about what he will do when actually deciding policy. He not only has a temperament and a mandate to break from the past, he has also been gifted a Republican-run Congress that will place fewer ‘restraints’ on him.

There are many policy areas where we’ve little idea about Donald Trump’s preferences. The campaign was so much about personalities that policies were barely discussed. Interestingly, we have greater clarity on his probable economic strategy. It is highly likely that the Trump administration will attempt the largest infrastructure buildout since Eisenhower. The intersection of several factors point to this.

First, candidate Trump repeatedly mentioned the appalling state of America’s infrastructure in virtually all his speeches. He is not the only person to have made this point. But it must be central to his thinking as he hammered at it over and over again.

Second, a big boost in infrastructure spending plays to both his strength as abuilder as well as to his core constituency, the white working class. A rise in construction and roadworks is a direct transfer of jobs to this group.

Third, the consensus among technocrats has shifted significantly in favour of an investment-driven approach. Even the IMF’s conservative economists are advocating fiscal policies that “support near-term growth and future productive capacity”. This is economist-speak for more public investment in infrastructure.

So how will this investment boom be funded? Much of the spending will have to come from a government already very indebted. Public debt has gone up in the last 15 years from 55% of GDP to 108%. So, the irony will be that a Republican-run Congress will be asked to run up even more debt.

Moreover, this investment-led strategy will be attempted at the time that unemployment is down at 4.9% and the output gap (IMF estimates) has dropped from a peak of –4.7% in 2009 to almost zero. This means that wages and prices of domestic non-tradables will begin to rise even as the current account deficit widens.

This brings us to the second irony of Trump’s likely economic strategy: it will make US imports rise sharply. Restrictions and tariffs will change the mix of imported goods, but will not really change the quantum.

Thus, we are likely to be heading into a world where a debt-driven investment boom in the US will revive world growth but also lead us back to large global imbalances. A steadily slowing Chinese economy, unable to sustain its own investment-led strategy, should be willing to fund the US deficit.

Critics will argue that this is an unsustainable economic model. But all periods of economic expansion in history have been underpinned by disequilibrium.

If Trump’s investment strategy creates genuine productive assets, it is not obviously worse than Obama’s social sector spending or the private consumption spending of the previous decade.

The demand dynamics and risks of this economic approach are relatively clear. Less obvious are the geopolitical implications of pursuing this strategy at a time when the rules of the international game are likely to change.

Since World War 2, and even more so after the Soviet Union’s collapse, the world order has been underpinned by a set of institutions, rules and unstated assumptions controlled by a class of technocrats, think-tankers, academics, media pundits and lobbyists concentrated in Washington DC (and their friends in New York, London, etc).

It is they who decide the contours of the conversation on everything from climate change to West Asian strategy. The cosy power of this second-order elite is already being challenged by the rise of India and China, Brexit and so on. Trump, for his own political reasons, may radically reconfigure it.

What if Trump forces changes in global trade treaties? What if he snubs Europeans who mocked him by backing a Russian, Brazilian or Indian to head the IMF? What if he disregards the large ecosystem of climate change experts and opts for completely different approach? It is impossible to predict the impact of such shifts. But history shows that such changes often have unintended consequences.

The global consequences and risks of President Trump’s likely economic strategy are, relatively speaking, predictable. The problem is that he may simultaneously attempt to change the underlying assumptions of the international order.

It is not possible ex ante to predict how this may change the way the world functions. For now, investors should buckle in for a faster-growing but imbalanced world.