Tag Archives: Tariffs

Faltering Multilateralism: Today, Let’s Start with Trade

Posted on by
Reply

It would be hard to make this stuff up. When I was deep into trade policy issues in the late 80s and early 90’s before China’s accession to the WTO, I could not have imagined a President using these trade policies to enact such broad-based tariffs. And it seems like that is how the CIT – the Court of International Trade, sees Trump tariff efforts as well.

Now I was going to dive into a just recently released book by Brookings edited by my longstanding colleague, Lim Wonhyuk from South Korea (Korea) titled: “Unfinished Transformation: Domestic Politics and International Relations Since the Covid-19 Pandemic”. Wonhyuk is the editor and I have a chapter in the volume – “The possibilities for “Effective Multilateralism” in the Coming Global Order. There are a variety of pieces in the book from some rather notable folk including: Kent Calder, David Lampton, Zia Qureshi, Norman Ornstein and my good colleague, Homi Kharas. And I will return to the just released book though unfortunately there does not appear to be a current digital version at this time. But I cannot let this CIT decision pass without comment.

Yes, so, the CIT ruled just last evening (Wednesday) and according to the NYTimes and Tony Romm and Ana Swanson, this was the conclusion reached:

“The U.S. Court of International Trade said the president had overstepped his authority in imposing his “reciprocal” tariffs globally, as well as levies on Canada and Mexico.”

What the Court has declared as illegal then are the “worldwide and retaliatory tariffs,” in other words, the 10 percent tariffs on all trading partners and also the reciprocal tariffs that President Trump paused for 90 days in order to negotiate trade deals with a host of trade partners. What remains in place for the moment are tariffs on specific products, such as those that were placed on steel, aluminum and automobiles. As pointed out in the NYTimes piece:

“The ruling, by the U.S. Court of International Trade, delivered an early yet significant setback to Mr. Trump, undercutting his primary leverage as he looks to pressure other nations into striking trade deals more beneficial to the United States.”

Paul Krugman in his Substack today pointed out what many trade types had been thinking all along:

“The thing is, it has been obvious all along that Trump’s use of the 1977 International Economic Emergency Powers Act to justify Smoot-Hawley level tariffs was a massive abuse of power. I mean, since when are 4 percent unemployment and 2.5 percent inflation an emergency justifying the reversal of 90 years of policy? But I guess I just assumed that things like that didn’t matter anymore.”

How did it reach this point? Well, this is how the NYTimes reporters described it:

“But Mr. Trump adopted a novel interpretation of its powers as he announced, and then suspended, high levies on scores of countries in April. He also used the law to impose tariffs on products from Canada and Mexico in return for what he said was their role in sending fentanyl to the United States.”

 

“On Wednesday, the Court of International Trade, the primary federal legal body overseeing such matters, found that Mr. Trump’s tariffs “exceed any authority granted” to the president by the emergency powers law. Ruling in separate cases brought by states and businesses, a bipartisan panel of three judges essentially declared many, but not all, of Mr. Trump’s tariffs to have been issued illegally.”

 

“It was not clear precisely when and how the tariff collections would grind to a halt. The ruling gave the executive branch up to 10 days to complete the bureaucratic process of ending them. The Trump administration immediately filed its plans to appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.”

At least for the moment the signature policy of this second Trump administration appears ‘cooked’. It will be interesting to see what Trump does next for it seems unlikely that Trump will give up on his most preferred policy – tariffs.

Image Credit: Wikipedia

This Post appeared originally at my Substack, Alan’s Newsletter: https://globalsummitryproject.substack.com/p/faltering-multilateralism-today-lets

 

What is This? Trump and His Tariffs

Posted on by
Reply

With the 100 days now reached, and just passed by Trump and his second administration, there is a desperate search to uncover a logic and goal or goals in Trump’s return to the White House and his most pointed policy action – the imposition of tariffs for all. I must say, it is not easy.

 

Now where to begin. I must say I am partial to David Brooks and his insights into Trump and his actions.  And sure enough he gave us a view recently in the NYTimes in a piece entitled, ‘Trump’s Single Stroke of Brilliance”: 

“Some of this is inherent in President Trump’s nature. He is not a learned man, but he is a spirited man, an assertive man. The ancient Greeks would say he possesses a torrential thumos, [passion]  a burning core of anger, a lust for recognition. All his life, he has moved forward with new projects and attempted new conquests, despite repeated failures and bankruptcies that would have humbled a nonnarcissist.”

 

“Initiative depends on motivation. The Trump administration is driven by some of the most atavistic and powerful of all human desires: resentment, the desire for power, the desire for retribution.”

Well, I must say, the resentment is pretty evident. But it still leaves rather unclear the possible, if it can be found, a Trump strategic logic. Many opinion folk are trying. Though there are so many initial policy actions by way of Trump’s ‘Executive Orders’ – indeed it seems to be a record for an incoming President – actions against immigrants, especially deportation actions, universities, research initiatives, development assistance, and much much more. Still nothing seems to be more dramatic than Trump tariffs. And the search is on, just as it is elsewhere, for a logic for the dramatic global imposition of wide-ranging tariffs.

Peter Warr prepared a piece for the East Asia Forum (EAF)  that attempts to crystallize, if possible, a Trump tariff policy logic. Warr is the John Crawford Professor of Agricultural Economics Emeritus at the Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University (ANU) and Visiting Professor of Development Economics at the National Institute for Development Administration, Bangkok. Here is his first statement on the logic of Trump tariffs: 

“He is imposing huge tariffs on the countries most vulnerable to them, then waiting to exploit the new position of strength to make demands. The uncertainty and fear they generate are not byproducts — they are the point, establishing the leverage Trump needs for the predatory negotiations that follow.” 

So, it is about gaining leverage over allies and adversaries alike. As Warr suggests:   

“The tariffs are surely harmful, even from a US perspective, but they are not ‘crazy’. Given the way Trump sees the world and himself, they almost make sense.” 

But then it becomes clear that the actual tariff levels imposed are not particularly sensible: 

“In his Rose Garden speech, Trump revealed supposed figures for ‘tariffs charged to the USA including currency manipulation and trade barriers’ and ‘USA discounted reciprocal tariffs’. The numbers mystified observers until analysts including James Surowiecki worked out that they reflected each country’s goods trade surplus with the United States as a percentage of their goods exports to the United States — with a minimum 10 per cent tariff imposed on all countries, even those with trade deficits.”

Now Warr, accepts that many analysts think the calculations from the administration are not sensible: 

“As an estimate of protection rates against US goods, this calculation is absurd. Surowiecki called the formula ‘surprisingly silly’, and economist Paul Krugman called it ‘completely crazy’. But is it?”

So, Warr suggests there may in fact be a certain logic. The tariffs are designed, according to Warr to target those most vulnerable to Trump leverage: 

“The critics missed the point that the formula attempts a rudimentary indication of countries’ vulnerability to US tariffs. Countries receiving the highest tariffs have the highest ratio of exports relative to imports from the United States, even if they have no restrictions against US goods, tariffs or otherwise.” 

Though he attempts to highlight a certain logic – targeting what he sees as those with significant vulnerability to the US, in the end Warr has to concede that the approach is not exactly optimal: 

“A better, but still approximate, measure of that vulnerability would have been gross exports to the United States divided by a country’s GDP, but that would produce much smaller tariffs, which presumably is why it was not used. This may also explain why services were excluded from the formula. The United States is a net importer of goods but a net exporter of services and it is much harder to levy tariffs on services than goods. Placing a country’s trade surplus with the United States in the numerator falsely suggests that the tariffs reduce the US trade deficit.” 

 

“All these simplistic formulae still overlook the fact that countries have differing alternative, non-US export opportunities. They also ignore the effect of global value chains, with products crossing international borders multiple times during production. Reported trade balances misleadingly record the final assembly point as the source of US imports.” 

Recognizing that the formula for tariffs is ‘simplistic’ Warr is left a bottom line that acknowledges only that Trump is a ‘protectionist’: 

“Trump is a protectionist. He sees the decline of US manufacturing as foreigners stealing US jobs — grievance politics gone global. He thinks tariffs might reverse that.”

 

“Trump is a dealmaker. By ‘deal’ he means a zero-sum transaction in which one party wins at the expense of the other. Trump is obsessed with winning and believes tariffs can create coercive bargaining power for the United States as a major importer.” 

 

“Trump’s deal-making strategy is now transparent. First, enact huge tariffs on the countries most vulnerable to the US. Then wait for their desperate leaders to call, pleading for special treatment. Then exploit the new position of strength to demand something he wants.” 

It is not much of a strategic logic as Warr accepts in the end:

“This is the outlook Trump brings to trade policy. To respond most effectively to the tariffs, their function must first be recognised. The uncertainty and fear they produce is their essential purpose, establishing the bargaining power he requires for the predatory negotiations that follow.” 

In fact I am more inclined to see Trump’s tariffs in the way described by Alan Beattie of the FT. Beattie was previously the FT’s international economy editor and world trade editor and these days he writes ‘Trade Secrets’.The title of his opinion says a lot: “Vision of a Trump master plan is fading in a storm of incoherence. As Beattie writes: 

“The weeks and months since Donald Trump took office — in fact since he was elected — have seen companies, foreign governments, commentators and the media play the somewhat frustrating game of Hunt The Rationale.”

 

“They have watched a dizzying carousel of tariffs being threatened and then delayed, or imposed and then lifted, or imposed only to be shot through with loopholes.” 

 

“Over time, the ranks of those claiming there’s a master plan have thinned — and their arguments have grown less persuasive. Increasingly it has become obvious that there is no plan, or at least no coherent plan with a single target and a way of hitting it. Instead, Trump’s tariff policy reflects a mixture of competing and often flat-out contradictory aims and a misunderstanding of the power of the crude instruments he is using.” 

 

“All at once, he appears to be trying to cut trade deficits, protect US manufacturing, boost federal revenues, bring down other countries’ tariffs by offering deals, coerce them into a variety of actions (including allowing the US to annex Greenland or Canada), extract favours for granting exceptions to US companies, and keep the spotlight squarely on himself. The chaos surrounding his tariff policy is not just ineptitude — it is the result of huge contradictions.” 

Now look it won’t stop analysts – both those determined to extract a logic and those likely not to, to keep examining the Trump policy action. Indeed I was attracted to the piece prepared by Stacie Goddard in Foreign Affairs  (FA), “The Rise and Fall of Great-Power Competition: Trump’s New Spheres of Influence”. Now Goddard in the piece tackled the view that Trump’s strategic actions were driven by great power competition – a view adopted by many realist thinkers who see this as Trump’s logic focusing on US ‘interests’ in contrast to other administrations that have focused on ‘values’ and ‘collective global governance action’. As Goddard writes: 

“But in the mid-2010s, a new consensus took hold. The era of cooperation was over, and U.S. strategy had to focus on Washington’s contests with its major rivals, China and Russia. The main priority of American foreign policy was clear: stay ahead of them.” 

 

“Some hailed this consensus on great-power competition; others lamented it. But as Russia amped up its aggression in Ukraine, China made clear its designs on Taiwan, and the two autocratic powers deepened their ties and collaborated more closely with other U.S. rivals, few predicted that Washington would abandon competition as its guiding light. As Trump returned to the White House in 2025,many analysts expected continuity: a “Trump-Biden-Trump foreign policy,” as the title of an essay in Foreign Affairs described it.” 

 

“Then came the first two months of Trump’s second term. With astonishing speed, Trump has shattered the consensus he helped create. Rather than compete with China and Russia, Trump now wants to work with them, seeking deals that, during his first term, would have seemed antithetical to U.S. interests.” 

 

“These interpretations might have been persuasive in January. But it should now be clear that Trump’s vision of the world is not one of great-power competition but of great-power collusion: a “concert” system akin to the one that shaped Europe during the nineteenth century.”

 

“In Trump’s vision of a new concert, Russia and China must be treated as kindred spirits in quelling rampant disorder and worrisome social change. The United States will continue to compete with its peers, especially with China on issues of trade, but not at the expense of aiding the forces that Trump and his vice president, JD Vance, have called “enemies within”: illegal immigrants, Islamist terrorists, “woke” progressives, European-style socialists, and sexual minorities.”

Now digging back 200 years to describe a political order that might raise similarities to the actions of today’s Trump actions and others is intriguing but not strongly convincing. Leave aside the dangers of historical comparison, and there are many, the problem here  is imposing strategic logic to a not very strategic actor. We’ve already seen it with his major initiative, tariffs. And, moreover, there is little to suggest that the other major actors accept and act in a concert-like manner. There is too much unilateral unconcert-like action.

But let’s keep our eye on Trump’s collaborative initiatives, if they are in fact there and determine whether great power collusion is in fact an operative framing for Trump 2.0 global order actions. Paint me skeptical.

Image Credit: NBC News

This Post first appeared at my Substack Alan’s Newsletter – https://globalsummitryproject.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/162614458/share-center

‘The Spiral of Disorder’ – Building then Destroying Trust – Let’s Start with Tariffs

Posted on by
Reply

It is mind-boggling to watch this second term of Trump, or Trump 2.0. First the flood of ‘executive orders’, though apparently they are technically not really  ‘orders’. And now the long awaited ‘Liberation Day’ announcement of tariffs including Trump’s incoherent ‘reciprocal tariffs’, though, in fact, it is no liberation. As The Economist described the Rose Garden event: 

Speaking in the Rose Garden of the White House, the president announced new “reciprocal” tariffs on almost all America’s trading partners. There will be levies of 34% on China, 27% on India, 24% on Japan and 20% on the European Union. Many small economies face swingeing rates; all targets face a tariff of at least 10%. Including existing duties, the total levy on China will now be 65%. Canada and Mexico were spared additional tariffs, and the new levies will not be added to industry-specific measures, such as a 25% tariff on cars, or a promised tariff on semiconductors. But America’s overall tariff rate will soar above its Depression-era level back to the 19th century.”

As Glenn Kessler in WAPO describes these Trump Liberation Day tariffs: 

Trump’s speech announcing a huge increase in tariffs on American trading partners was riddled with falsehoods and misleading statements on trade that he has made for years. But now they are determining policy that will increase the costs of goods for many Americans.

But as The Economist pointed out about this tariff announcement: 

Almost everything Mr Trump said this week—on history, economics and the technicalities of trade—was utterly deluded. His reading of history is upside down. He has long glorified the high-tariff, low-income-tax era of the late-19th century. In fact, the best scholarship shows that tariffs impeded the economy back then. He has now added the bizarre claim that lifting tariffs caused the Depression of the 1930s and that the Smoot-Hawley tariffs were too late to rescue the situation. The reality is that tariffs made the Depression much worse, just as they will harm all economies today. It was the painstaking rounds of trade talks in the subsequent 80 years that lowered tariffs and helped increase prosperity.

Take a look at the tariffs imposed by Trump as described in Upshot at the NYTimes: 

New tariffs for select trading partners

Country New

tariff

 Share of

U.S. imports

 Goods trade

balance
E.U. +20% 18.5% –$241 bil.
China +34% 13.4% –$292 bil.
Japan +24% 4.5% –$69 bil.
Vietnam +46% 4.2% –$123 bil.
South Korea +26% 4.0% –$66 bil.
Taiwan +32% 3.6% –$74 bil.
India +27% 2.7% –$46 bil.
Switzerland +32% 1.9% –$39 bil.
Thailand +37% 1.9% –$46 bil.
Malaysia +24% 1.6% –$25 bil.

Show 50 more rows +

Sources: White House, Observatory of Economic Complexity Notes: Trade balance and import share figures based on 2024 trade data.” 

And Mr Trump’s grasp of the technicalities was pathetic. He suggested that the new tariffs were based on an assessment of a country’s tariffs against America, plus currency manipulation and other supposed distortions, such as value-added tax. But it looks as if officials set the tariffs using a formula that takes America’s bilateral trade deficit as a share of goods imported from each country and halves it—which is almost as random as taxing you on the number of vowels in your name.

Anthony DeBarros, the data news manager at the WSJ, describes it this way: 

The White House’s new tariffs were pegged to amounts it said other countries impose on the U.S. In many cases, those amounts appear to match a basic formula: the size of a country’s goods-trade imbalance with the U.S., divided by how much America imports from that nation.

 

The chart President Trump read from in the Rose Garden [image above] listed tariffs charged on imports from the U.S. as “including currency manipulation and trade barriers.” The numbers don’t necessarily match what foreign countries charge against imports from the U.S.

 

For example, Chinese tariffs against the U.S. were about 23% overall as of last month, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

 

But dividing the U.S.’s  2024 goods-trade deficit with China, of about $295 billion, by the amount the U.S. imported from China results in the 67% tariff value presented by the White House.

 

$295bn ÷ $439bn=67%

 

The math works out that way for at least 71 of the 184 nations, plus the European Union, included in Wednesday’s announcement. In most of those cases, the U.S. is charging a new tariff of roughly half the rate it calculated.

 

And indeed Trump’s chart that he showed with applied tariffs, identifies China with 34% tariffs being applied. 

As for many others, DeBarros points out: 

For the remaining nations, including all those where the U.S. has a trade surplus, the tariff charged on imports from the U.S. was listed as 10%. In these instances, the U.S. set a 10% reciprocal tariff.

And The Economist even offers a solution starting with constraining the desire to hit back. Instead it offers the following alternative response: 

Instead, governments should focus on increasing trade flows among themselves, especially in the services that power the 21st-century economy. With a share of final demand for imports of only 15%, America does not dominate global trade the way it does global finance or military spending. Even if it halted imports entirely, on current trends 100 of its trading partners would have recovered all their lost exports within just five years, calculates Global Trade Alert, a think-tank. The EU, the 12 members of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), South Korea and small open economies like Norway account for 34% of global demand for imports.

As many point out, however, China’s distorted trade policy needs to be addressed. China has committed too many harmful trade policies as identified by  The Economist: 

Building a trading system with China is desirable, but will be viable only if it rebalances its economy towards domestic demand to ease worries about dumping. Also, China could be required to transfer technology and invest in production in Europe in exchange for lower tariffs.

As Alan Beattie writes in his FT column: 

There can be no logic-washing of Donald Trump’s tariffs. This isn’t part of a carefully-designed industrial policy or a cunning strategy to induce compliance among trading partners or a choreographed appearance of chaos to scare other governments into obedience. It’s wildly destructive stupidity, and the generations of American, and particularly Republican politicians, who allowed things to slide to this point are collectively to blame.

The message is: on those facing the  Trump craziness, don’t commit the errors of Trump 2.0. Act smarter. Maintaining and deepening global integration should remain the goal and endpoint, notwithstanding Trump. 

As The Economist  concludes: 

If this seems gruelling and slow, that is because integration always is. Throwing up barriers is easier and faster. There is no avoiding the havoc Mr Trump has wrought, but that does not mean his foolishness is destined to triumph.

The message is clear – don’t do what Trump has done. Hopefully, in the longer term major trading partners, friends and foes, will grasp the logic of greater trade with each other and leave the Trump trade strategy by the wayside.  

In the short term, however, it is not likely. I can’t say that is very surprising. Retaliating in the short term is just too attractive  – standing up to the bully.  And, indeed, China has already responded with trade retaliation. As Keith Bradsher and David Pierson report in the NYTimes, the day after Trump Liberation Day:

China has struck back at President Trump.

 

In a rapid fire series of policy announcements from Beijing on Friday evening, including 34 percent across-the-board tariffs, China showed that it has no intention of backing down in the trade war that Mr. Trump began this week with his own steep tariffs on imports from around the world.

 

China’s Finance Ministry said it will match Mr. Trump’s plan for 34 percent tariffs on goods from China with its own 34 percent tariff on imports from the United States.

 

Separately, China’s Ministry of Commerce said it was adding 11 American companies to its list of “unreliable entities,” essentially barring them from doing business in China or with Chinese companies. The ministry imposed a licensing system to restrict exports of seven rare earth elements that are mined and processed almost exclusively in China and are used in everything from electric cars to smart bombs.”

Hurtful and ‘Trump-like’. 

I had hoped not only to examine the impact of Trump 2.0 tariff policy on the global economy but also focus on policy actions that have enhanced, or possibly sustained the multilateral institutions or, alternately, weakened the multilateral institutions. And to that we will move to.

Image Credit: BBC 

This Post originally appeared at my Substack Post, Alan’s Newsletter – https://globalsummitryproject.substack.com/p/the-spiral-of-disorder-building-then

All Purpose Tools – with Destruction in Mind

Posted on by
Reply

It was hard to swallow the various initiatives and proposals that flooded from the White House and indeed Trump’s lips this week. Where does one start – with Gaza and the crazy Trump ‘wacko’ notion of the ‘Riviera of the  Mediterranean’? Or, do we look at a somewhat lower decibel view – the threats and or actions by Trump when it comes to tariffs. Tariffs, these things you remember up until Trump as a policy instrument that  used to be about trade policy. Well, not any more according to Trump. 

It was dismaying and equally disheartening to listen to the various efforts by his advisors past and present to normalize the actions along with Republicans in Congress while the loyal opposition, the  Democrats, seem ‘rooted in their seats’ with what appears to be only minor ‘huffing and puffing’ against the many mania actions by the President. 

What seems most startling is his recent flood of actions – Executive Orders and Memos – take us back to Trump 1.0 – but worse. The Trump Gaza proposal seems to be – without question – the winner of the week though. As Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman of the NYTimes, point out:

While his announcement looked formal and thought-out — he read the plan from a sheet of paper — his administration had not done even the most basic planning to examine the feasibility of the idea, according to four people with knowledge of the discussions, who were not authorized to speak publicly. 

 

Inside the U.S. government, there had been no meetings with the State Department or Pentagon, as would normally occur for any serious foreign policy proposal, let alone one of such magnitude. There had been no working groups. The Defense Department had produced no estimates of the troop numbers required, or cost estimates, or even an outline of how it might work.

 

There was little beyond an idea inside the president’s head.

And as David Leonhardt, also of the NYTimes, noted: 

For all the early energy of his presidency — the flurry of executive orders, confirmations and firings — Trump has looked less disciplined this week than he did in the initial days after returning to office. The last few days have instead conjured the chaos of his first term, when his grand pronouncements often failed to change government policy. 

Back to the Gaza proposal, for  a moment.  It is worth noting Aaron David Miller’s view as set out recently in his FP in a piece titled, “Trump Makes Population Transfer an American Policy”. Miller has had a long connection with  the region. He was a former U.S. State Department Middle East analyst and importantly a negotiator in Republican and Democratic administrations there. As he wrote: 

From my 27 years of working in the official U.S. Arab-Israeli diplomacy business, I can say President Donald Trump’s Gaza gambit goes above and beyond the craziest and most destructive proposal any administration has ever made (and there have been some strange ones). In one fell swoop, standing next to an Israeli leader who looked like the cat that just swallowed a dozen canaries, the president let loose on a scheme that is not just impractical but dangerous.

 

Trump has now harnessed U.S. prestige and credibility to propose an idea that will be perceived as forced transfer or worse; validated the all-too-dangerous fantasies of the Israel right; undermined key U.S. partners Egypt and Jordan; made his own goal of Israeli-Saudi normalization that much harder; and for good measure sent an unmistakable signal to authoritarians everywhere that they have the right to assert control over other people’s territory. 

Clearly, it is ‘stomach churning’ to many that have been involved in the long unsuccessful effort to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute and more recently to end the Gaza war. Arab partners have uniformly rejected the Trump proposal for Gaza and Israeli support at least to the extent of organizing the Israeli military to aid voluntary evacuation as pointed out by Alexandra Sharp at FP: 

Such suggestions have sparked a flurry of behind-the-scenes diplomacy to stop the joint Israel-U.S. proposal. Both Jordan and Egypt have refused to accept displaced Gaza residents, with Jordanian King Abdullah II rejecting any efforts to annex the territory and Cairo stating that the plan “constitutes a blatant and flagrant violation of international law, international humanitarian law, and infringes on the most basic rights of the Palestinian people.” Egyptian officials told Time magazine that such a plan could undermine the country’s peace treaty with Israel and harm the region’s stability.

 

Saudi Arabia also strongly rejected the proposal and vowed not to sign a normalization deal with Israel—a foreign-policy priority for the Trump administration—without the creation of a Palestinian state that includes Gaza.

In the face of the Gaza proposal, Trump’s recent tariff actions against Canada, Mexico and China, seem positively tame. Still, though, it was rather crazy stuff threatening 25 percent across the board tariffs on Canada and Mexico only to hold off for 30 days after discussions with Mexican and Canadian leaders and then applying 10 percent across the board tariffs against China. The ultimate outcomes remain unknown though it is startling that Trump’s actions to delay action comes after accepting, at least in the Canadian case, proposals that had been offered significantly earlier. And not unlike the Gaza proposal, it is hard to discern either the methods or the ultimate goal of Trump’s proposals and demands. Is there a method or a clear goal?   The question that faces allies and foes alike is: is there a method to the madness? Not surprisingly experts and opinion writers have in the past, and in the early days of this  second Trump Administration are trying to assess what objectives and outcomes is Trump attempting to achieve? And what diplomatic means is Trump employing to achieve those objectives. 

On the latter Aaron Blake has suggested that there are four possible explanations for this current Trump 2.0 approach. In a piece in the Washington Post (Wapo)  titled, “4 explanations for Trump’s shocking Gaza proposal”, Blake gives us the following possible explanations for the outburst from Trump on Gaza at the press conference with Benjamin Netanyahu. He suggests:

  1. It is a distraction – “And there’s no question that Trump, more than ever, is “flooding the zone” with bold (and often legally dubious) actions that challenge everyone to keep up.” 

  2. It is a negotiating ploy “This could be Trump threatening the unthinkable to force Middle Eastern countries to pursue a more sustainable peace. It would basically be: If you guys can’t figure it out, we’re coming in.” 

  3. He’s leaning into the madman theory even more – ““The idea is basically to make other countries believe you’re completely unpredictable and capable of anything, to keep them in line.”

  4. His sudden imperialist streak is very real – ““It’s possible all of this imperialistic talk is bluster. But it’s also possible that Trump feels freed up in his second term, after years of leveraging “America First” for political gain, to change it up and make the expansion of the United States (in areas he actually cares about) a key plank of his legacy.”

All have some validity. It is evident that the approaches vary from slightly ‘off kilter’ – the madman theory, to a strategic gambit – a negotiating ploy.   I don’t think it is possible to draw strong conclusions at this early Trump 2.0 stage. What we do know however, that particularly with respect to the Gaza proposal, he is on his own untethered to his advisers and key cabinet members. And in the case of the ‘Gaza bomb’ it had one added dramatic effect – it left Netanyahu completely off the hook from any sharp questioning from global media over immediate Gaza actions on the ceasefire, and beyond, the role of the Palestinian Authority, and the future of a “two state solution”. It was a significant timely encounter completely avoided.

With respect to Trump’s goals, assuming there are such animals, it is hard to ignore the fact that his actions seem intended to dismantle the order that the US built; to see the United States as demanding fealty to a leading power and the shape of relations the US is striving to build under Trump 2.0. Decades of building integrated markets in North America, and likely  beyond, are now threatened by Trump’s bellicose actions. Yet according to Bob Davis in FP in a piece titled, “Trump Has the Whole Global Trade System in His Sights”, this is Trump’s goal: 

But he has a bigger goal in mind for his second term with plans he is still cooking up. Trump seeks to remake global trade based on what he calls “reciprocity”—treating other countries, supposedly, in the same fashion as they treat the United States. China is not the target this time—or at least not the only one. He has his sights set on any country with which the U.S. has a large, persistent trade deficit, which in his mind means it is treating the U.S. “terribly.” Success would mean sharply reducing the trade deficit, no matter which country he hits or what other geopolitical goals it impedes.

Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t have this goal in mind. He is swinging tariffs as an ‘all purpose tool’ with destruction in mind. We will be watching. 

Image Credit: France 24

This Post first appeared at my Substack, Alan’s Newsletter – https://globalsummitryproject.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/156695312/share-center