I wonder if we are so used to President Trump driving the headlines and political discussion in this country that we’re all collectively a little blind to the possible self-destructive potential of his escalating trade wars with nations around the world? There are some good summaries of the trade situation out this weekend, including at both The New York Times and here and here at The Washington Post. Two things jump out at me: the degree to which other nations’ domestic politics may lead them to defy Trump in ways that he isn’t anticipating, and to which the president is betting that the U.S. economy will better handle any damage compared to its trading partners. Wielding the blunt instrument of tariffs, as one analyst refers to them, he seems to increasingly be under the spell of his own ability to maintain the initiative. (The linkage he has now established between increased tariffs on Mexico and that country reducing immigration into the U.S. seems a serious transformation of a complicated trade war into something much more complex and intractable, and around which the president may have far less control than he imagines).
But with all the Trump-centric coverage, I doubt that our media has sufficiently covered what other leaders and other populations are willing to do to avoid being steamrolled by the U.S. in these trade disputes; that is, whether we’re too used to seeing everything from Trump’s perspective, and aren’t as aware as we should be of other countries’ agency in these matters. Likewise, what’s being reported about the harm to corporate supply chains due to various tariffs raises the question of whether Trump doesn’t understand the full implications of his moves for the health of an American economy in which many sectors have built themselves around the assumption of free trade agreements such as NAFTA.
The growing possibility that the reputational damage Trump is doing to the U.S., via ham-handed tactics that treat long-time allies as untrustworthy adversaries (hello, Mexico and the E.U.), and untrustworthy adversaries as long-time allies (hello, North Korea), is also deeply worrisome. As a law professor observer notes in this Washington Post article, “One of Trump’s major failings is that he only has a hammer. He has no capacity of looking at the long term and recognizing that the vast majority of our interactions in life are repeat interactions. I joke with my students that if you treat negotiations as a one-shot deal, it will be. No one will ever want to deal with you again.” What felt like a theoretical threat a year ago — that Trump might permanently affect the U.S.’s ability to maintain long-term trading and political arrangements with allies and partners — is starting to feel a lot more real.
It’s particularly horrifying to contemplate that Trump’s willingness to not only maintain but escalate such a self-defeating approach is rooted, above all else, in his determination that this is how he will secure himself victory in 2020. It is clear he believes that a display of toughness, that he is fighting for his supporters, is key to winning the next presidential election. Long-term damage to the U.S. economy or interests does not matter; Trump is all. It is tempting to hope that this self-obsession may yet backfire, that, as I noted earlier, he’s overplaying his hand and underestimating the resolve of U.S. trading partners. As veteran U.S. diplomat Christopher R. Hill remarks in the Post article, “I know that Trump considers the 2020 campaign as a triumphant march to the inevitable [reelection], but that’s not the way the rest of the world is looking at it. You’re already seeing the Chinese holding back and saying, ‘We’ll see what will happen over the next 18 months to see if he’s still around and then maybe we’ll do something.’ To some extent, Trump does not have the self-awareness to understand that people are looking at the window closing on him.” Put another way: what interest do other world leaders really have in accommodating Trump when defying him may help doom his re-election chances in 2020?