Could you imagine finding out in 2010 from a memo that looked like this:
Sorry, we need to let go half of workforce because we've decided we're not going to continue to do business with a country. There's no reason to do so at this moment, but we just get the vibe that this country will make a real estate grifter their leader because they saw him on a reality show and mostly out of spite for half of the population of their own country.
Hindsight is 20/20. Yeah it's super obvious now doing business with the US is a bad idea, but most of the things that are happening now would've been too unrealistic to put into a fictional story. Even a comedy couldn't credibly go this far. The Colbert Report wouldn't even suggest anything on the level of insanity we see out of the US every day. It wouldn't get any laughs it would've just confused the audience.
The US is beyond a joke now, nobody could've saw this coming.