One of the paradoxes of Donald Trump’s election was that it seemed like a dramatic repudiation of Barack Obama — after the first black president, a birther; after a cool liberal academic, a roaring populist; after a multicultural “world man,” an American nationalist — and yet it happened at a time when Obama was quite popular.
Ben Rhodes, the bright young salesman for Obama’s foreign policy, offered this explanation for the paradox in his recent book: “When you distilled it, stripped out the racism and misogyny, we’d run against Hillary eight years ago with the same message Trump had used: She’s part of a corrupt establishment that can’t be trusted to bring change.”
.. Trump is trying to make a deal with North Korea, a last Cold War holdout, much as Obama did with Cuba. Trump is angering a traditional set of allies (the Europeans and now Canada) while pining for a détente with an authoritarian rival (Russia); Obama had a similar approach to realignment in the Middle East, angering the Israelis and Saudis while seeking an accommodation with Iran.
.. clear overlap in the two presidents’ approach to the global war on terrorism they inherited from George W. Bush: Both are willing to be aggressive with drones and bombs and special forces, both claim expansive executive authority to determine battlefields and targets, but both are wary of wider wars and ready to feud with their own advisers about anything that involves ground troops.
.. In all things Trump is cruder than Obama, more willing to make subtext into text, less (or not even remotely) detail-oriented, more careless of diplomatic norms and dismissive of humanitarian concerns. But if the two men use different rhetoric and often favor different alliances, they have both pursued the same kind of bigger-picture strategy — seeking to extricate the United States from some of its multiplying commitments, to shift our post-Cold War position away from a Pax Americana model of peace-through-hegemony and toward an “offshore balancing” approach that makes deals with erstwhile enemies and makes more demands of longtime friends. “America First” and “leading from behind” may sound very different, but they can reflect similar impulses and produce similar results.
.. the fact that the pursuit of offshore balancing has been sustained across two quite different administrations suggests that in some form it’s here to stay, and that the expert class should recognize its merits.
.. That recognition doesn’t mean shrugging off the Pax Americana. But it means acknowledging that neither the “pay any price, bear any burden” Cold War model of American leadership nor the “unipolar moment” model from the late 1990s and 2000s fits current realities very well.
.. hawkish politicians of the center-left and center-right — a Hillary Clinton, a Jeb Bush, a Marco Rubio — tend to foster an unrealistic view of what the United States can accomplish through idealistic pronouncements and military might.
.. Obama and Trump triumphed politically in part because they seemed more sensible than Clinton and her Republican counterparts about the need to make strategic choices, to cut losses and to cut deals.
.. often when the hegemon pulls back the new equilibrium turns ugly enough to pull us right back in... the wooing of Kim represents a gamble that the North Koreans really want to change their posture, to reap the possible benefits of normalization, even to enter America’s orbit instead of Beijing’s. (If Kim’s regime became merely authoritarian rather than totalitarian, imitating the House of Saud instead of Stalin, the last scenario isn’t entirely fanciful.).. We also don’t know how the Chinese (and their potential allies of convenience in Moscow) would react to North Korea swinging into our orbit; there are ways in which peninsular stabilization could lead to regional destabilization... given that Trump is a longtime huckster who’s feeling his way entirely by instinct, there should be a lot of skepticism about how well this is likely to turn out.
Trump delights in executive swagger. His tariffs show it.
Never mind that the Cato Institute’s Colin Grabow notes
- defense-related products require only 3 percent and 10 percent of domestic steel and aluminum production, respectively. Or that
- six of the top 10 nations that export steel to the United States have mutual defense agreements with the United States. Or that
- China, an actual military competitor and potential adversary, is not among the top 10. Or that
- Canada, a NATO ally, supplies more U.S. aluminum imports than the next 11 countries combined. Or that, as The Post reports,
- “For nearly a quarter-century under U.S. law, Canada has been considered part of the U.S. defense industrial base, as if its factories were American.” Or that
- the aluminum for military aircraft and the steel for military vehicles will be more expensive, so, effectively, the administration is cutting the defense budget1
.. Electrolux, Europe’s largest manufacturer of household appliances, responded to the U.S. tariffs by suspending plans to invest $250 million in a Tennessee factory.
.. Protectionism is a scythe that slices through core conservative principles, including opposition to government industrial policy, and to government picking winners and losers, and to crony capitalism elevated to an ethic (“A few Americans first”).
.. Big, bossy government does not get bigger or bossier than when it embraces protectionism — government dictating what goods Americans can choose, and in what quantities, and at what prices.
3 Trump properties posted 144 openings for seasonal jobs. Only one went to a US worker.
“America First” doesn’t seem to apply to the president’s own businesses.
.. The H-2B visa program allows seasonal, non-agricultural employers — like hotels and ski resorts — to hire foreign workers when they can’t find American ones. The Trump administration temporarily expanded this guest-worker program in 2017 while restricting other avenues of legal immigration, including the H-1B program for high-skilled workers.
.. The Trump Organization is exactly the kind of company that relies on the H-2B visa program for low-skilled workers.
.. two Trump properties in Florida (including Mar-a-Lago) and one in New York from the start of 2016 through the end of 2017. In that period, hiring managers said they were able to find and hire only one qualified American worker — a cook — for 144 open positions for
- servers,
- cooks,
- housekeepers, and
- bartenders.
.. He said Mar-a-Lago is just using the program how other employers use it: as a way to avoid paying higher wages or offering more benefits to attract American workers.
.. several labor economists in the state who were nonetheless puzzled that hotels or clubs would have such a hard time finding any service workers to hire.
.. “It doesn’t make sense,” said Tobias Pfutze, an economics professor at Florida International University in Miami. “I haven’t heard anything about there being a labor shortage. The service labor market here is very flexible.”
.. with a well defined peak season between the months of October and May of every year. The period during which the foreign national’s services are needed is not unpredictable, subject to change or considered to be a vacation period for our employees who are hired on a permanent basis.
.. Employers are required to pay the average local wage for the advertised position. Mar-a-Lago offered
- $10.33 per hour for housekeepers,
- $13.43 for cooks, and
- $11.88 for servers (no tips).
Steve Bannon: ‘China, Persia, and Turkey’ Forming ‘New Axis’ That’s ‘Confronting the Christian West’
Former Breitbart News Executive Chairman and White House Chief Strategist Stephen K. Bannon is warning of a “new axis” of powers that will confront “the Christian West.”
BANNON: What we’re seeing today is China, Persia, and Turkey—three ancient civilizations—coming together to form a new axis. It’s confronting the Christian West and also a big part of Islam that is tied to the West. You’re starting to see this form every day like in the 1930s. You’re starting to see it crystallize more and more. [Emphasis added]
.. GQ: Are you going to make a push to advance this idea of a “new axis”? How do you plan to do that?