Apparently, one war isn’t enough, because over the weekend, Donald Trump started new wars of trade and words with two of our closest allies. The president has long had a habit of alienating allies and fawning over dictators. We saw that again this week.
First, Trump distanced the US from South Korea and crowed about his relationship with Kim Jong Un in a move that will offend both South Korea and Japan. Just a day before joint exercises with the South Korean military were supposed to begin, Trump abruptly announced that the maneuvers would be “substantially reduced.” That the exercise continued at all was due only to the stated fact that it was too late to cancel them entirely.
Trump was apparently angry that South Korea has not joined in his Qixotic battle against Iran, but the fact that there is no coalition of the willing rests on the shoulders of Trump and Netanyahu, who decided to start the war on their own without consulting allies, much less expending the diplomatic capital required to build a coalition.
There has long been speculation that Trump would withdraw American forces from the Korean peninsula. While no such announcement has been made, the rift makes that a real possibility. This is the opposite of projecting American power and would benefit China and North Korea, while creating further problems with South Korea and Japan. It might also spur South Korea to become a nuclear power.
Bases in South Korea are not just about the defense of Korea. They are part of an interlocking line of defense that guards the entire Pacific region against Chinese encroachment. When that line is weakened, China gains an advantage.
Trump’s decision was likely economic as well as sour grapes over Iran. South Korea is an economic competitor as well as a trading partner. The Trump Administration said last year that the nation had promised to invest $350 billion in the US. Politico reports that frustration over the pace of that investment, equal to about one-fifth of the South Korean economy, may have played a role in Trump’s decision, but it was never a real possibility that South Korea would export that much wealth to the US.
Economics definitely played a role in the recent rift with Canada. Trump implemented 50-percent tariffs on a variety of Canadian goods on Saturday after trade talks broke down. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has pledged to fight back with retaliatory tariffs “dollar for dollar.” The current US-Canada trade deal was signed by - wait for it - Donald Trump in 2018.
As an aside here, I’m going to point out that Trump made a de facto admission that tariffs raise costs for consumers when he suspended beef tariffs in order to “get prices down.” Again, this was at the same time that he slapped new tariffs on Canada, as well as at the same time that the federal government is refunding tariffs that the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional.
At this point, Canada had little choice. It is readily apparent that deals made with Donald Trump are not worth the paper they are printed on. A deal can be inked and signed, and Trump will change his mind and demand more concessions five minutes later.
The trade war with Canada may backfire as well. Consider the hypothetical in which border states such Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin were involved in a series of close elections that could decide control of the House and Senate. States that have a lot of cross-border trade with Canada might react negatively to Administration policies that a) raise their taxes and costs and b) adversely affect their markets.
Trump is a bully, and the way to handle bullies is to stand up to them. I’m surprised that our allies have not tried this before now. I don’t think that the Canadian model will be the last time such resistance happens.
At this point, some may accuse me of rooting against my country. Don’t confuse the president with the country. America is my country, right or wrong, but that does not mean that I have to support the actions of its government if I believe them to be unwise or immoral.
Part of loving your country is wanting the best for it. And like a parent who wants the best for his children, that does not mean supporting everything the children do. Tough love includes keeping the kids accountable when they make bad and self-destructive choices, while nudging them back towards the straight and narrow.
What we are seeing now are not policies that will make America great again. We are seeing policies that will make America irrelevant. If our allies can’t trust us to have their backs on security issues, but do trust us to backstab them on trade deals, that’s a recipe for creating an international order that bypasses or excludes the United States.
The fact that American voters have embraced Trump and his quasi-isolationist ideas not once but twice means that we can’t be trusted not to go further down this road in the future, if not in 2028, then sometime beyond. That means that much of the damage that Trump has done to American prestige, power, and relationships might never be repaired. At best, it will take decades to recover.
And we still have two years to go.
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