His style of deal-making prizes uncertainty and brinkmanship, without a plan for what comes next.
Mr. Trump’s foreign policy reflects his instinct for political realignment at home, based on celebrity populism.
Populist movements feed off grievances and impatience with traditional politics. Frustrations—whether generated by economic distress, social displacement, or cultural challenges—fuel skepticism about institutions and elites. Challengers (who want to become the new elite) attack traditional leaders as out of touch, incompetent and corrupt.
.. First, it professes to reflect the will of a scorned people.
.. Second, populism finds and blames enemies, domestic or foreign, who thwart the people’s will. Mr. Trump has mastered insulting such scapegoats.
.. Third, populism needs “the leader,” who can identify with and embody the will of the people. Like other populist leaders, Mr. Trump attacks the allegedly illegitimate institutions that come between him and the people. His solutions, like those of other populists, are simple. He contends that the establishment uses complexity to obfuscate and cover up misdeeds and mistakes. He claims he will use his deal-making know-how to get results without asking the public to bear costs.
.. Mr. Trump’s foreign policies serve his political purposes, not the nation’s interests
- .. He says the U.S. needs to build a wall to keep Mexicans at bay—and Mexico will pay for it. He asserted he would
- block Muslims from coming to America to harm us.
- His protectionist trade policies are supposed to stop foreigners from creating deficits, stealing jobs, and enriching the corporate elite.
- Mr. Trump also asserts that U.S. allies have been sponging off America. T
- he U.S. military is supposed to hammer enemies and not bother with the cleanup—even if the result, for example in Syria, is an empowered axis of Iran, Shiite militias, Hezbollah and Bashar Assad’s regime.
.. The president’s emphasis on discontinuity—breaking things—demonstrates action while disparaging his predecessors.
.. His style of deal-making prizes uncertainty and brinkmanship, which risks escalation, without a plan for what comes next.
.. Other presidents led an alliance system that recognizes U.S. security is connected to mutual interests in Europe, the Asia-Pacific region and the Middle East. Past presidents believed that the U.S. economy would prosper in a world of expanding capitalism
.. Mr. Trump dismisses this U.S.-led international system as outdated, too costly and too restrictive of his case-by-case deal-making.
Institutions:
- .. Trump disdains America’s intelligence agencies and is
- dismantling the State Department. His foils at home are
- the courts,
- the press, a clumsy
- Congress beholden to antiquated procedures, and even
- his own Justice Department.
.. Mr. Trump’s recent trip to Asia reveals that foreigners have taken his measure. They play to his narcissism. He in turn basks in their attention, diminishes his own country by blaming past presidents, and preens with promises of great but unspecified things to come.
.. The president’s need to project an image of personal power—for his domestic audience and his ego—makes him more comfortable with authoritarian leaders. Presidents Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and Rodrigo Duterte have noticed, as has part of the Saudi royal family.
.. Sixty percent say alliances with Europe and East Asia either are mutually beneficial or mostly benefit the U.S. Record numbers say international trade is good for consumers (78%), the economy (72%) and job creation (57%). Some 65% support providing illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, and only 37% characterize immigration as a critical threat. All these numbers have shifted against Mr. Trump’s positions since the election.
China Could Sell Trump the Brooklyn Bridge
Xi has been brilliant at playing Trump, plying him with flattery and short-term trade concessions and deflecting him from the real structural trade imbalances with China. All along, Xi keeps his eye on the long-term prize of making China great again. Trump, meanwhile, touts every minor victory as historic and proceeds down any road that will give him a quick sugar high.
What world are we in? One in which we’re going through three “climate changes” at once.
- We’re going through a change in the actual climate: Destructive weather events and the degradation of ecosystems are steadily accelerating.
.. while China hails globalization, it imposes a 25 percent tariff on imported cars (while America imposes only 2.5 percent) and 50-50 joint ventures and technology transfers for big companies that want to gain access to China’s giant market. But China gets away with it.
.. plowing government funds and research into commercializing 10 strategic industries while creating regulations and swiping intellectual property from abroad to make them all grow faster. These industries include
- electric vehicles,
- new materials,
- artificial intelligence,
- integrated circuits,
- biopharmacy,
- quantum computing,
- 5G mobile communications, and
- robotics.
.. And Trump? On the change in the climate, he’s promoting coal over clean energy, like wind and solar, and has appointed climate-change deniers to all of his key environmental posts. While China is run by engineers, Trump doesn’t even have a science adviser.
.. “This will be wounding to one of America’s gems,” its institutions of higher education, Drew Faust, the president of Harvard, said to me. And it’s basically being done to cut taxes for the wealthy.
.. the Chinese are focused on the giant winds of change, and Trump is betting on his gut and a grab bag of tax cuts based on no take on the world, other than dubious trickle-down economics.
.. When you don’t know where you’re going any tax cut will get you there, any replacement for Obamacare will get you there, any wall will get you there, any trade concession will get you there.
.. I’m certain our economic system is better than theirs — in theory.
But China, with its ability to focus, is getting 90 percent out of its inferior system, and it has brought China a long way fast. And we, with too little focus, are getting 50 percent out of our superior system.
In China, Trump Employs Tough Talk, Flattery With Xi
U.S. president blames his predecessors, not Beijing, for ‘unfair’ trade relationship
In Beijing on Thursday, Mr. Trump spoke in unusually conciliatory tones during joint appearances with Mr. Xi, hailing their “very good chemistry” while also expressing hope for forceful action from Beijing.
Mr. Trump blamed past U.S. administrations, rather than Beijing, for what he described as a “very one-sided and unfair” trade relationship, adding, “but we’ll make it fair and it’ll be tremendous to both of us.”
.. Mr. Trump did include tougher talk in his pledge to tackle imbalances: “We must immediately address the unfair trade practices that drive this deficit,” he said. “We really have to look at access, forced technology transfer and the theft of intellectual property, which just by and of itself is costing the United States and its government at least $300 billion a year.”
.. “I told President Trump that the Pacific Ocean is big enough for both China and the U.S.,” he said.
.. “It appears Trump opted to publicly play down U.S.-China differences, praise the Chinese people for what they have achieved, and give Xi Jinping face,” said Bonnie Glaser,
.. Beijing’s strategy appeared to be to flatter Mr. Trump into easing up on pressure over trade and North Korea and acknowledging China’s territorial interests and ambitions for a leading role on the world stage.
.. Mr. Trump had told the Chinese president: “You’re a strong man—you can, I’m sure, solve this for me.”
.. However, he acknowledged that on trade, “the things that have been achieved thus far are pretty small.”
.. Mr. Xi is expected to use his speech to the same forum to press the image of China as the new champion of global free trade, and to encourage other countries to participate in his Belt and Road plan for wide-ranging trade and transport links.
North Korean Nuclear Test Draws U.S. Warning of ‘Massive Military Response’
The underground blast was by far North Korea’s most powerful ever. Though it was far from clear that the North had set off a hydrogen bomb, as it claimed, the explosion caused tremors that were felt in South Korea and China. Experts estimated that the blast was four to sixteen times more powerful than any the North had set off before, with far more destructive power than the bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.
.. Mr. Trump hinted at one extreme option: In a Twitter post just before he met his generals, he said that “the United States is considering, in addition to other options, stopping all trade with any country doing business with North Korea.’’
.. Taken literally, such a policy would be tantamount to demanding a stoppage of any Chinese oil to North Korea, essentially an attempt to freeze out the country this winter and bring whatever industry it has to a halt.
.. The Chinese would almost certainly balk; they have never been willing to take steps that might lead to the collapse of the North Korean regime, no matter how dangerous its behavior, for fear that South Korean and American troops would occupy the country and move directly to the Chinese border.
.. Beyond that, the economic disruption of ending all trade with China would be so huge inside the United States that Mr. Trump’s aides declined on Sunday to discuss the implications.
.. “We are not looking to the total annihilation of a country, namely North Korea,” he said. “But as I said, we have many options to do so.”
.. The North has shown no interest in engaging with the United States unless the Americans end their military presence in the South.
.. the North Korean leader has tried to portray his nuclear program as unstoppable and nonnegotiable
.. “North Korea is a rogue nation which has become a great threat and embarrassment to China, which is trying to help but with little success,” he said. “South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing!”
.. Mr. Trump’s undisguised swipe at the South for “appeasement” was certain to exacerbate fears that the United States might put it in danger. And it came only a day after Mr. Trump threatened a new rift in relations with suggestions that the United States might withdraw from a trade deal with South Korea — one that was intended to bolster the alliance.
.. The test’s timing was a major embarrassment for President Xi Jinping of China, who on Sunday was hosting a summit meeting of the so-called BRICS countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
.. the test seemed intended to jolt Mr. Xi and convince him that he needed to persuade the United States to talk to North Korea.
.. The timing of the test on Sunday was almost certainly no coincidence: It came during the American Labor Day weekend, and the anniversary of the founding of the North Korean government is next Saturday.
In the coming days, the government is expected to organize huge rallies to celebrate the bomb test and Mr. Kim’s leadership.
.. “Pyongyang has a playbook of strategic provocations, throws off its adversaries through graduated escalation, and seeks maximum political impact by conducting weapons tests on major holidays,”
.. experts have said that the North may have tested a “boosted” atomic bomb that used tritium,