Tag Archives: Trumpism

What is This? Trump and His Tariffs

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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 Latest Post from Alan’s Newsletter – ‘The Spiral of Disorder’ – Building then Destroying Trust – Let’s Continue

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President Donald Trump speaks to supporters at a rally Saturday, Oct. 17, 2020, in Janesville. Angela Major/WPR

“At 9:37 a.m. Wednesday, the president was still bullish on his policy, posting on Truth Social: “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!” “But in the end, it was the markets that got him to reverse course.” 

And what brought it about, notwithstanding Trump’s assertion he knows what he’s doing: 

 

“The economic turmoil, particularly a rapid rise in government bond yields, caused Mr. Trump to blink on Wednesday afternoon and pause his “reciprocal” tariffs for most countries for the next 90 days, according to four people with direct knowledge of the president’s decision.”

It is turmoil and it accompanies Trump as we’ve seen both in his first four years and now, I think, in a ramped up version in his second. 

The behavior does not change. Now what is this all about? I think David Brooks, a contributor for the PBS NewsHour and an opinion columnist for the NYTimes pinpointed Trump’s underlying motivation and his behavior. As Brooks recently suggested in a piece in The Atlantic, titled, “I Should have Seen this Coming”: 

“If there is an underlying philosophy driving Trump, it is this: Morality is for suckers.The strong do what they want and the weak suffer what they must. This is the logic of bullies everywhere. And if there is a consistent strategy, it is this: Day after day, the administration works to create a world where ruthless people can thrive. That means destroying any institution or arrangement that might check the strongman’s power. The rule of law, domestic or international, restrains power, so it must be eviscerated. Inspectors general, judge advocate general officers, oversight mechanisms, and watchdog agencies are a potential restraint on power, so they must be fired or neutered. The truth itself is a restraint on power, so it must be abandoned. Lying becomes the language of the state.” 

 

“Trump’s first term was a precondition for his second. His first term gradually eroded norms and acclimatized America to a new sort of regime. This laid the groundwork for his second term, in which he’s making the globe a playground for gangsters.”

 

“We used to live in a world where ideologies clashed, but ideologies don’t seem to matter anymore. The strongman understanding of power is on the march. Power is like money: the more the better. Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the rest of the world’s authoritarians are forming an axis of ruthlessness before our eyes. Trumpism has become a form of nihilism that is devouring everything in its path.” 

An axis of ruthlessness. Wow! The impact on trade – with the tariff madness is all too apparent. But it is an attack as well  on the alliances and partnerships in the global order that likely brings the most long term damage to the stability of the global  order and these attacks have been ongoing since the first Trump administration. 

This weakening to multilateralism is not just to be laid at the feet of President Trump, however. Some time ago Stewart Patrick, now of the Carnegie Endowment (CEIP) pointed out the faltering of multilateralism. As he wrote in the Oxford journal, Global Summitry, [ a reveal, I was editor at the time] in 2015, he cast back to Obama as he then was, a junior US Senator prior to his first term as President. Obama wrote in 2007 criticizing Bush at that time for the failure to promote greater multilateral action:

“This vision of a multilateral renaissance was premised on the conviction that a new global age had dawned. The core purpose of statecraft was no longer restraining geopolitical rivalry but managing shared dilemmas of interdependence.” 

 

“This broad congruence of interest created unprecedented opportunities for cooperation. But success was not preordained. It required a new international bargain: established powers would grant emerging ones a place at the global head table, and rising powers would accept greater responsibilities for advancing the common good. The administration assumed the United States could engineer global institutional reform on this basis.” 

 

“That confidence proved unfounded. The Obama years show just how resistant formal international organizations are to fundamental change. Two of the most obvious cases are the UN Security Council, whose permanent membership still reflects the world of 1945, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which has failed to implement governance reforms that members painstakingly negotiated in 2010. The sources of these logjams are legion. Three of the most important are clashing big power preferences, generic institutional inertia, and inconsistent U.S. leadership (Stein 2008).”

 The weakening of multilateralism accelerated, it seems to me, with Trump, that erosion only slowed somewhat with the Biden years, but now seemingly has returned with a vengeance under Trump 2.0. As Ivo Daalder has pointed to in his recent piece on NATO in FA , titled, “NATO Without America: How Europe Can Run an Alliance Designed for U.S. Control”: 

“Given Trump’s low regard for the alliance and its collective defense commitment, it would be no surprise if his administration decided to withdraw from NATO . In late 2023, Congress passed a law prohibiting the president from doing this without congressional assent—a bill that, ironically, was cosponsored by then Senator Marco Rubio, who is now Trump’s secretary of state.”

 

“Even if he doesn’t withdraw from the alliance, Trump has already seriously undermined it. NATO’s Article 5 collective-defense provision—which says that an attack on any alliance member will be considered an attack on all—derives its credibility less from the formal treaty than from a belief among the members that they are all prepared to come to one another’s defense. In practice, this has meant that the United States, with its vast military, would step up to protect any NATO ally that is attacked. Trump’s words and actions since retaking office—including his direct threats against Canada and Greenland, both of which are part of NATO—have eroded these assumptions.” 

The challenge to NATO’s collective defence with Trump’s uncertainty toward collective action is evident. And many of what I call the Formals, the UN, in particular the UN Security Council and its specialized agencies, the International Financial Institutions, or IFIs, and more are hobbled by the rising geopolitical tensions – the US, Russia and China and the decline in willingness of these and more powers to collaborate. 

Yet as noted above, the weakening in multilateral collaboration has been evident for some time. My colleague, Stewart, reflected on this, and noted the rise of informal institutions. As he then wrote:

“If one focuses solely on formal international organizations, these blockages are grounds for despair. But that pessimistic view obscures a more complicated and promising picture of multilateral cooperation. For what sets the current global era apart is not the absence of international institutions but their astonishing diversity. Faced with resistance to sweeping, transformational change within more encompassing global bodies, U.S. and foreign policy-makers have generated and then exploited a messier form of multilateralism (Haass 2010).” 

 

“Formal organizations persist, but governments increasingly participate in a bewildering array of flexible networks whose membership varies based on situational interests, shared values, or relevant capabilities. States may continue to negotiate and collaborate within conventional bodies like the United Nations or the Bretton Woods institutions. But extensive policy coordination also occurs within parallel frameworks that are ad hoc and temporary rather than formal and permanent.” 

And Stewart noted that another colleague, Miles Kahler had even earlier, much earlier, identified the emergence of what he referred to as ‘minilateralism’ in an article in International Organization ( IO) , titled : “Multilateralism with Small and Large Numbers” As Stewart wrote: 

“These institutions are often “minilateral” (Kahler 1992) rather than universal; voluntary rather than legally binding; disaggregated rather than comprehensive; trans-governmental rather than just intergovernmental; regional rather than global; multi-level and multi-stakeholder rather than state-centric; and “bottom-up” rather than “top-down.”” 

And as I and others have noted, a number of what I call Informals have arisen since the 1970s. First there was the G7 and then in 1999 the G20 as a finance and central bank gathering becoming a G20 leaders-led annual gathering in 2008. Finally, there was the creation of the BRICs in 2006 – Brazil, Russia, India, China with a leader-led gathering in 2009 and the addition of South Africa in 2011. I mention these separately since these Informals are more institutionalized and far less ad hoc than many minilaterals. They are hybrids between the formal and the informal institutions.

The real question though is whether these leader-led informals can counter the destructive geopolitical tensions that now dominate global order relations? These tensions are brought home by the current difficulties between the G20 host, South Africa and the Trump administration. Two senior officials, namely Secretary of State Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have failed recently to join their first ministerial gatherings during South Africa hosting. And questions have arisen as to whether Trump will join the G20 leaders summit gathering this year in South Africa. 

The question raised is: can this Informal work to advance the current global governance agenda, without the US? Or, in fact is this the only way possible for this key Informal to move forward. And, if it is the only way, will leaders minus the US be willing to press forward on critical global governance issues? Which then is the more fruitful path for global collaboration?

All of this is critical and bears close attention, now, and going forward. We will follow closely and report frequently. 

Image Credit: WPR 

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

 

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

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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

The Crooked G20/G7 path for the United States

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Well yes a bit late. And a bit shorter. Indeed I am anticipating rather shorter Posts, and possibly later than usual for the next couple of Posts as I am attending the Annual International Studies Association (ISA) meetings – the 66th – in Chicago. Lots of folks and many good panels and sessions on international politics international security and global governance.

Now, I was tempted to reflect on the ‘shit show’ that went down between President Zelenskyy and President Trump and Vice President Vance. But I think I’ll hold off. There will be lots of immediate reaction, and indeed there has been, and I am interested in seeing ‘how the dust settles’ on this grim encounter  before trying to assess the consequences for US-Ukraine, US, Ukraine-Europe, and US-Russia relations.

Instead, I just want to underline the continuing disinterest-distaste the Trump administration appears to be paying to the South Africa Presidency of the G20. It began publicly, as noted in my previous post, with the decision by Secretary of State Marco Rubio to absent himself  from the first Foreign Ministers meeting under the South Africa presidency. As reported by Rob Rose and Sam Fleming of the FT, this was followed by the decision by Scott Bessent, the Secretary of the Treasury not to attend the first G20 Finance gathering. As they wrote:

“US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said last week he would remain in Washington — a move that followed secretary of state Marco Rubio’s decision to not “waste taxpayer money or coddle anti-Americanism” by attending a G20 meeting of foreign ministers in South Africa last week.”

What then followed to was a determination by several other finance ministers to follow suit:

“Among the countries that are not expected to send their finance ministers to Cape Town are India, China, Brazil and Mexico, according to people familiar with the organisation of the meetings.”

As it turned out Japan’s finance minister also decided not to attend as well.

Rob Rose then followed up in a subsequent FT  piece that then described additionally that the finance ministers who did attend in Cape Town were  unable to issue a joint finance statement in part due to Trump’s decision to impose 25 percent tariffs on Europe:

“Trump said this week that he planned to impose 25 per cent tariffs on goods from the EU, saying the bloc’s goal was to “screw the United States”.”

 

“G20 finance ministers have been unable to agree a joint communique of their gathering in Cape Town, intensifying questions over the relevance of this body in an era of waning US support for multilateral forums.”

 

“A European official who attended the G20 meetings told the Financial Times that “harsh words” had been exchanged between European finance ministers and US officials in light of Trump’s threats.

 

““In many ways, the US was alone,” he said. “Its trade position was on everyone’s lips, with many of the discussions being about US tariffs and what is at stake for multilateralism. In general, the European countries are aligned that this protectionism is bad for the world.””

 

“In the chair’s summary of the talks, released at the summit’s close, the G20 said the discussions “reiterated the commitment to resisting protectionism”, and a commitment to a “multilateral trading system with the World Trade Organization at its core”.”

The angry Trump words and actions have undermined already two very important ministerial gatherings and may well lead other US ministers to cancel their attendance as well. Such actions and words could sidetrack many G20 meetings and actions. And It is still unclear whether Trump will attend the Leaders’ Summit in November. While there is a significant downside to US absence, on the other hand Trump’s decision to attend also raises questions. If he chooses to attend then the question arises what that may be like. How destructive might he choose to be. GIven the meeting with  Trump and Zelenskyy just last week that could be a terror incident as well.

All that is nerve-racking enough. But we still need to see whether the US is willing to take hosting of the G20 for 2026. With South Africa, as I pointed out in a previous Substack Post, completing its G20 hosting by the end of the year, the G20 cycle restarts with the United States presumably taking the hosting for the year, having taken the first G20 Leaders’ Summit during the George W. Bush’s presidnecy in 2008. Would it be better for the G20 to turn down such hosting in the face of Trump’s current antagonism. How that could occur I’m not at all sure. Finally, this leaves one final question: will Trump play destroyer with his presence at the G7 which this year has Canada – the presumptive 51st state according to Trump, hosting the G7 this current year.

Image Credit: NBC News

This Post originally appearde at my Substack, Alan’s Post.

https://globalsummitryproject.substack.com/p/the-crooked-g20g7-path-for-the-united

 

 

The Trump Battering of the Order

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As much destruction, it seems, as this second Trump administration can engineer! And fast! One can’t avoid ‘reeling’ from the current Trump administration actions and plans. And yet we are only 30 days into the second Trump administration. It is truly amazing! 

The real dilemma for me – and for many others –  is the inability to determine whether there is method in Trump’s foreign policy actions; or, whether it is just madness that leads to few good outcomes. Read through  all the experts and you come away completely confused . Some do see method, maybe somewhat accidentally, perhaps, but nevertheless some positive direction – whether with respect to:  trade, Ukraine, Gaza, relations with the allies, especially Europe and Japan, or adversaries – be it Russia or China. But it is very hard to uncover any consistency of approach and any likelihood of valuable or even redeemable outcomes. 

Let’s take Tom Friedman. In a NYTimes piece entitled: “Why Trump’s Bullying Is Going to Backfire” he writes: 

And if all of this is just Trump bluffing to get other countries to give us the same access that we give them, I am OK with it. But Trump has never been clear: Some days he says his tariffs are to raise revenue, other days to force everyone to invest in America, other days to keep out fentanyl.

 

As the Beatles sang, I’d love to see the plan. As in: Here’s how we think the global economy operates today. Therefore, to strengthen America, here is where we think we need to cut spending, impose tariffs and invest — and that is why we are doing X, Y and Z.

 

That would be real leadership. Instead, Trump is threatening to impose tariffs on rivals and allies alike, without any satisfactory explanation of why one is being tariffed and the other not, and regardless of how such tariffs might hurt U.S. industry and consumers. It’s a total mess. As the Ford Motor chief executive Jim Farley courageously (compared to other chief executives) pointed out, “Let’s be real honest: Long term, a 25 percent tariff across the Mexico and Canada borders would blow a hole in the U.S. industry that we’ve never seen.”

 

So, either Trump wants to blow that hole, or he’s bluffing, or he is clueless. If it is the latter, Trump is going to get a crash course in the hard realities of the global economy as it really is — not how he imagines it.

And quite rightly Friedman points out that today’s global trade complex is nothing like the past where the conception was: one manufactured and exported  X while importing from another, Y. As Friedman describes what he nd others see as the world of global trade today: 

My favorite tutor in these matters is the Oxford University economist Eric Beinhocker, who got my attention when we were talking the other day with the following simple statement: “No country in the world alone can make an iPhone.”

 

Think about that sentence for a moment: There is no single country or company on earth that has all the knowledge or parts or manufacturing prowess or raw materials that go into that device in your pocket called an iPhone. Apple says it assembles its iPhone and computers and watches with the help of “thousands of businesses and millions of people in more than 50 countries and regions” who contribute “their skills, talents and efforts to help build, deliver, repair and recycle our products.

We are talking about a massive network ecosystem that is needed to make that phone so cool, so smart and so cheap.” 

The big difference between the era we are in now, as opposed to the one Trump thinks he’s living in, is that today it’s no longer “the economy, stupid.” That was the Bill Clinton era. Today, “it’s the ecosystems, stupid.”

Or turn to regional conflicts, Ukraine for instance. Here is the reaction to recent statements and Trump actions as described by Nicholas Kristof. In a piece titled, “With Trump’s Prostration to Putin, Expect a More Dangerous World”from the NYTimes on February 19th Kristof writes: 

I’m not sure most Americans appreciate the monumental damage President Trump is doing to the post-World War II order that is the wellspring of American global leadership and affluence.

 

He’s shattering it. He’s making the world more dangerous. He’s siding with an alleged war criminal, President Vladimir Putin of Russia, and poisoning relations with longtime U.S. allies. The trans-Atlantic alliance is unraveling. 

 

When I was a young reporter, we referred to countries like Poland and Romania as Soviet satellites; now Trump is doing Putin’s bidding and seems determined to put the United States in the Russian orbit. 

 

The Trump administration has lately sided with Moscow on one issue after another: Ukraine must cede territory, can’t join NATO and should hold new elections just as Russia insists. (Meanwhile, there’s no call for Russia to hold elections.) Trump even suggested that Russia should be readmitted to the Group of 7.

 

In a falsehood-filled rant on Truth Social on Wednesday, Trump went further. He denounced Ukraine’s elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, as a “dictator” who had squandered money and had “better move fast or he is not going to have a country left.” Trump’s post had the tone of statements from the Kremlin.

Now Dan Drezner in a piece from WPR suggests that Trump’s approach to allies in Europe may possibly incorporate a strategic logic: 

Even Trump’s second-term threats directed at longstanding allies can be seen as an example of what Ketian Zhang has labeled “coerce to deter”: In bullying smaller states, Trump is trying to signal what the U.S. could do to great powers if provoked. I have previously expressed deep skepticism about whether this will work during Trump’s second term—but the possibility cannot be ruled out.

This optimistic view, if you want to call it that, was employed by Trump in the first term. As Dan argues: 

Let’s start with the most optimistic scenario for the second Trump White House: that his application of the so-called madman theory works. According to this logic, which Rosanne McManus has critically examined, Trump’s norm-breaking and bullying tactics inject unpredictability into any kind of crisis-escalation calculus, ostensibly deterring other actors from challenging the United States.

However that is only one possible view as Dan suggests. Less optimistically Dan also suggests: 

The other scenarios paint a bleaker picture for the United States. The second possibility is that the Trump administration’s weakening of the U.S. national security state will be interpreted as an invitation for more aggressive Russian and Chinese expansionism. 

And there is even one further possibility as pointed to by Dan: 

There is one final possibility, and it is the most disconcerting outcome for the U.S.: that neither Russia nor China decide to take any provocative action while Trump is president. This is not because he represents a formidable deterrent, but rather the opposite. In this scenario, Trump so weakens the United States’ standing in the world and is so keen to appease autocrats like Putin and Xi that their best option is let him do whatever he wants.

The motivation and consequences of Trump’s actions leave us bewildered. It is at the moment not possible to draw firm conclusions on the Trump approach or the outcomes from administration actions. But most analysts are greatly worried. One other area of concern draws immediate attention. That is Trump’s attachment to, and US policy toward, international institutions and the current global order. My good colleague, Patrick Stewart from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) has raised some real concerns in a recent CEIP Commentary titled, “The Death of the World America Made: Donald Trump’s war on multilateralism is misguided and dangerous”. He writes: 

On February 4, 2025, President Donald Trump signed a sweeping executive order with the potential to upend decades of American global engagement. The directive mandates a comprehensive review within 180 days of all current multilateral organizations of which the United States is a member and all international treaties to which it is party. The explicit purpose of this exercise is to determine whether such support should be withdrawn. … 

 

Of far greater import is the order’s decree that the secretary of state shall review “all international organizations” of which the United States is a member and “all conventions and treaties” to which it is party, to determine whether these “are contrary to the interests of the United States and whether [they] can be reformed.” The secretary will then recommend to the president “whether the United States should withdraw” from those commitments. In principle, the directive could lead to a U.S. abrogation of thousands of treaties and a departure from hundreds of multilateral organizations.

 

It is even plausible that the Trump administration will conclude that an “America First” foreign policy requires pulling the United States out of the UN—and kicking the UN out of the United States. Both are long-standing objectives of conservative nationalists who contend, speciously, that the UN threatens American sovereignty.

Now there seems to be a debate among experts as to whether the Trump administration can actually do so; nevertheless as Stewart suggests: 

As Trump’s first weeks in office have shown, this White House doesn’t do ambiguity—and there are many ways to wreck institutions without formally leaving them.

For my part I am equally worried about Trump’s actions with the Informals – the G7 and especially the G20. Particularly with regard to the latter, the hosting schedule for the G20 ends its first cycle with Brazil this year holding the Presidency and then the G20 returns to the beginning of the cycle with the United States scheduled to host in 2026. The G20 is critical in part because it draws together the significant advanced countries, like the US, Germany, France, Japan and now increasingly influential countries from the Global South such as China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa and others. Already the Trump administration, because of its apparent dislike for South Africa’s ‘domestic policies and its theme focus for this year’s G20 Summit  – Solidarity, Equality, Sustainability – has led Secretary of State Marco Rubio cancelling his appearance at the first Foreign Ministers gathering in South Africa as apparently has Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary for the first Finance Ministers gathering. As Rubio suggested in his cancelling his attendance, as reported in the Hill: 

I will NOT attend the G20 summit in Johannesburg,” Rubio wrote in a Wednesday post on the social platform X. “South Africa is doing very bad things. Expropriating private property. Using G20 to promote ‘solidarity, equality, & sustainability.’ In other words: DEI and climate change.

 

Rubio added that his job is to “advance America’s national interests, not waste taxpayer money or coddle anti-Americanism.

Now the G20 has not operated very effectively as  a so-called Steering Committee but it has displayed value as a Crisis Committee. Without it, I don’t know but I worry.  

Who knows if Trump will show up to the G20 Leaders Summit. And who knows what he will do if in fact he does show up to the Leaders’ Summit on November 22-23rd. Moreover, will the United States take on the hosting for 2026, especially if it has failed to participate in most gatherings. There is much to worry about. But we will follow it closely. 

This Post first appeared asa Substack Post at Alan’s Newsletter: https://globalsummitryproject.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/157647801/share-center

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All Purpose Tools – with Destruction in Mind

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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

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Struggling with Global Leadership

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So, with the last several Posts here at Alan’s Newsletter, I have been transitioning – altering my mindset, and bidding farewell to the Biden administration and contemplating the reality of the return of Donald Trump as US President with a new administration. There are certainly strong signs that this time around, as opposed to 2017, that the Trump administration is intent on ‘hitting the ground running’. As The Economist noted, for Trump there is nothing more critical than immigration and the removal of illegals:

Mr Trump has long been exercised about immigration. He made building a wall along America’s border with Mexico a central theme of his election campaign in 2016. He duly issued a flurry of executive orders on immigration within weeks of taking office in 2017, including a ban on visas for applicants from various largely Muslim countries and instructions to federal agencies to expedite the construction of the border wall and to detain more illegal immigrants. … Stephen Miller, his deputy chief of staff, is an America First, anti-immigration hawk who has been fighting against bipartisan immigration reform in Congress since 2013. “As God is my witness,” he declared last year, “you are going to see millions of people rapidly removed from this country who have no right to be here.

The question is where does Trump and his team take the US? On immigration? On US-China relations? On relations with allies and the multilateral relations and organizations that the US has built over the past several decades? What approach is Trump going to take in rolling out ‘America First’? Now, there is lots of speculation but with so much being described really knowing is nearly impossible. But that being said, one clear direction is described by Fareed Zakaria. Like many, Fareed has to absorb the recent inducements and/or threats by Trump with respect to Greenland and Canada and the Panama Canal. As a result Fareed suggests:

Having campaigned on a policy of ending wars, making peace, putting America first and disentangling the country from the world, President-elect Donald Trump this week decided to revive 19th-century imperialism. In a single news conference, he pondered making Canada a state and acquiring Greenland and the Panama Canal by economic coercion — and declined to rule out using military force in the latter two cases.

Fareed, in his weekly Washington Post opinion piece titled, “Trump revives 19th-century imperialism. Make Russia great again!”, suggests these territorial aggrandizement initiatives simply put the US today in the same league as Russia and China:

In the news conference, Trump proposed getting rid of the “artificially drawn line” between Canada and the United States. Of course, that is precisely what President Vladimir Putin says about the line between Russia and Ukraine. Or President Xi Jinping about the division between China and Taiwan. This is a world that makes Russia and China great again.

It is tough to really understand the future US foreign policy with Trump at the helm. Now I may be reaching way too far but I was intrigued by the republishing, recently by Foreign Affairs, of a piece by Richard Haass now President emeritus of CFR and Charles Kupchan a Senior Fellow and Director of European Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Charlie is also Professor of International Affairs at the School of Foreign Service and Government Department at Georgetown University. The article is entitled, “The New Concert of Powers: How to Prevent Catastrophe and Promote Stability in a Multipolar World”. The piece was originally published in 2021.

For Haass and Kupchan the future of the global order is multipolarity as they describe it in the FA article. As they suggest:

Moreover, even if Western democracies overcome polarization, beat back illiberalism, and pull off an economic rebound, they will not forestall the arrival of a world that is both multipolar and ideologically diverse.

And as they argue the best means, maybe the only structure for the global order to achieve some stability in such a coming multipolar environment is a gathering of major powers:

The best vehicle for promoting stability in the twenty-first century is a global concert of major powers. As the history of the nineteenth-century Concert of Europe demonstrated—its members were the United Kingdom, France, Russia, Prussia, and Austria—a steering group of leading countries can curb the geopolitical and ideological competition that usually accompanies multipolarity.

 

This recent uptake in concert operation and interest in the same includes a major piece by my colleague, Andrew Fenton Cooper, from Waterloo University. You might want to take a look at his recent publication from Oxford Press titled: The Concertation Impulse in World Politics”. But turning back to Haass and Kupchan this is their description and understanding of such a concert:

 

Concerts have two characteristics that make them well suited to the emerging global landscape: political inclusivity and procedural informality. A concert’s inclusivity means that it puts at the table the geopolitically influential and powerful states that need to be there, regardless of their regime type. In so doing, it largely separates ideological differences over domestic governance from matters of international cooperation.

Concerts have two characteristics that make them well suited to the emerging global landscape: political inclusivity and procedural informality. A concert’s inclusivity means that it puts at the table the geopolitically influential and powerful states that need to be there, regardless of their regime type. In so doing, it largely separates ideological differences over domestic governance from matters of international cooperation.

A global concert would be a consultative, not a decision-making, body. It would address emerging crises yet ensure that urgent issues would not crowd out important ones, and it would deliberate on reforms to existing norms and institutions.

 

This steering group would help fashion new rules of the road and build support for collective initiatives but leave operational matters, such as deploying peacekeeping missions, delivering pandemic relief, and concluding new climate deals, to the UN and other existing bodies. The concert would thus tee up decisions that could then be taken and implemented elsewhere. It would sit atop and backstop, not supplant, the current international architecture by maintaining a dialogue that does not now exist.

This new global concert proposal, according to Haass and Kupchan, would have the following membership:

A global concert would have six members: China, the European Union, India, Japan, Russia, and the United States.

The concert’s members would collectively represent roughly 70 percent of both global GDP and global military spending.

The analysis seems to be moving full speed forward until:

This proposal presumes that none of the concert’s members would be a revisionist power bent on aggression and conquest.

Ah, and there is the dilemma – the ‘fly in the ointment’. The reality is that two great powers are evidently revisionist – that is Russia and China, and now under Trump the same may well be said for the upcoming Trump administration.

But as Nathan Gardels, the editor-in-chief of Noema Magazine and also the co-founder of, and a senior adviser to the Berggruen Institute, just recently wrote in Noema:

A revisionist state seeks to change the rules and norms of the extant world order. In recent years, we have become used to castigating China and Russia as the chief renegades in this endeavor. Now, as Princeton political scientist John Ikenberry pithily notes, another “revisionist state has arrived on the scene to contest the liberal international order … it is the United States. It’s Trump in the Oval Office, the beating heart of the free world.”

So, are we at a brick wall when it comes to promoting stability and dampening geopolitical tensions? Well, like many of my international relations colleagues I have spent time examining the contours and the operation of the classic global concert – the Concert of Europe. For Haass and Kupchan this is the model for a contemporary concert designed to diminish tensions and mitigate conflict. But the Concert is 200 years ago and it is not at all clear that a modern day instrument could operate in any way similar to this much earlier European instrument. And I would think we have already a ready-made instrument of concert-like characteristics – the G20. This involves a membership wider than that suggested by these authors. The G20 today includes: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Türkiye, United Kingdom and United States and two regional bodies today: the European Union and the African Union. It seems to me this Informal has a much better representation from the Global South and the collective could turn its attention to critical global security issues as well as global economic issues if the motivation were there.

But concerts may not be, or may not be the only mechanism to generate potentially greater stability in a world of increasing disorder. Rather, plurilateral structures – smaller groupings that include major and Middle Powers, especially from the Global South targeting growing challenges to global stability – plurilateral collaborations that could target climate change and the green transition, debt distress and relief, regional conflicts and more. Let’s tackle real threatening problems starting with these plurilateral collaboratives and build our way to a global concert in time. Let’s start here with this smaller step, and who knows, in time it might also provide for a larger grouping, even a ‘global concert’ with possibly better leadership than we seem to have right now.

This first appeared as a Substack Post at Alan’s Newsletter – https://globalsummitryproject.substack.com/publish/post/155031165

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The Impact of Trump 2.0

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They were obvious moves by Trump, I suspect. Nevertheless, some of the choices by Trump for his senior appointments were startling – and what one might otherwise describe as ‘dismaying’. For many of us not a particular surprise. So we have House of Representative Matt Gaetz nominated as Attorney General. As The Guardian declared:

Donald Trump’s decision to nominate the far-right Republican congressman Matt Gaetz as attorney general has sent shockwaves through Washington, including the president-elect’s own party.

 

Trump on Wednesday announced Gaetz as his pick to be the nation’s chief law enforcement officer in the justice department, a role that directs the government’s legal positions on critical issues, including abortion, civil rights, and first amendment cases.

Michelle Goldberg, writing for the NYT had some choice words for this Trump nomination:

Of all the people Trump was considering for A.G., Gaetz is unique mainly for how much he is hated by other Republicans, and not just moderate ones. In the final months of the last Trump administration, the Justice Department opened an investigation into whether Gaetz had a relationship with an underage girl that violated federal sex trafficking laws.

 

It should go without saying that Gaetz is not, by any normal standards, even a tiny bit qualified to be attorney general. He practiced law for only about two years before running for office, handling small-time civil matters, like suing an old woman for money she owed his father’s caregiving company.

Then, there was the equally startling nomination of Robert F Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic and more that Trump has nominated for the head of Health and Human Services. And then there is Pete Hegseth nominated for Secretary of Defence and Tulsi Gabbard nominated for Director of Intelligence. Each in their own career and experience raising questions over their appointment. And then, finally,  there is the appointment of Elon Musk Trump’s now seemingly close buddy to a Commission to bring efficiency to the US federal government. As Ed Luce at the FT commented:

What you might feel less comfortable in admitting is that Trump is giving utterance to America’s soul. The US is driven by the spirit of limitless resources and surmountable frontiers. Its mission is “To explore strange new worlds . . . to boldly go where no man has gone before”, as James T Kirk put it. On Tuesday Trump promoted Elon Musk, his own Captain Kirk, to Starfleet Admiral. Musk’s USS Enterprise is the department of government efficiency (Doge).

Notwithstanding the name the Musk initiative is unlikely to be a government department as noted by Luce:

It is unclear whether Doge will have any statutory authority, which would require an act of Congress, or simply be a super-advisory body to the Trump administration. Either way, Musk’s goal is to close down regulatory agencies in Washington or drastically pare them back. He recently said he would also cut almost a third from the federal government’s $6.7tn budget.

Government authority or not, Musk will be disruptive, as are likely to be all these recent appointments, and that is the point. Disruption, chaos and controversy  – the Trump modus operandi. As noted again by Luce on the choice of Musk:

But Musk will probably get a lot of his way on deregulation. If you work for the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Department of Justice, the US Federal Reserve, the Bureau of Labor, the Environmental Protection Agency, the US Department of Agriculture or the departments of energy and education, be afraid; be very afraid.

For those poor souls who suggested that Trump wouldn’t follow through on some of his crazier actions, often after plaintively admitting that they had voted for him, these appointments seem to put ‘stop’ to that benign view of Trump governing.

And raising the spectre of serious policy steps likely leading to disruption, chaos and controversy, Trump 2.0 will have a significant impact on US foreign policy efforts. Here, it is worth examining the recent comments by my colleague, Susan Thornton. Susan is currently a Senior Fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center at the Yale Law School. She also participates in many of the China-West Dialogue (CWD) discussions that we have held over the last few years. Susan retired as a senior diplomat after almost three decades of experience with the U.S. State Department in Eurasia and East Asia. She retired, in fact, as Acting Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the Department of State.

Susan does not underestimate the prospect for a dramatic impact by Trump on American foreign policy driven, as Susan sees it, by an American public that is no longer willing to bear the burden of a leading US role in the global order. As she wrote recently at the East Asian Forum, the US public, from Susan’s view, is determined to stand down the United States:

Americans are no longer confident in the promise and effectiveness of their institutional system, they reject the obligation of answering the world’s fire alarms, they are weary of bearing the cost of global security and they see clearly that other states are free-riding on US largesse. The US electorate has been consistently ahead of its politicians in its rejection of the role of ‘world policeman’.

In Susan’s view the election of Trump satisfies, it seems, a desire among many in public to wind down US entanglements in the global arena:

Trump, and certainly his national security team, does not appreciate that he was put in power to dismantle US global hegemony. But Trump’s bullying transactionalism, his aversion to commitment, his penchant for tariffs and complete indifference to the potential impact that the United States has on other countries can have no other outcome.

 

It is obvious that permanent damage will be done to the United Nations, international economic institutions, multilateral organisations in which the United States is a member and any international effort to combat transnational challenges. The dissolution began during his first term and will be irreversible after the coming four years. The Americans who elected Trump as their standard bearer will cheer their demise.

And, the Trump actions, according to Susan, will only raise the temperature in the key global relationship, the US and China. As Susan suggests:

There will be a further sharp disconnect of the US and Chinese economies. Trump and the Republican Congress are likely to invoke more tariffs, export controls and sanctions leading to global fragmentation, rising costs and slower growth. Businesses will face an ever more complicated picture and are already strategising how to adjust. Many countries in Asia are devising economic hedging strategies and will try to walk a middle line amid deteriorating US–China relations. Whether and how a Trump administration might impose costs for such an approach remains an open question.

Susan further suggests that, in fact, Trump is the instrument of many in the US electorate that are tired with the burden resulting from the US leading role in the global order:

We have already entered the transition to a post-Pax Americana world — Trump is an accelerant. This does not mean that the United States will disappear. It will remain the most powerful and wealthy country in the world. But it does leave a vacuum in the international arena and US partners will hopefully step in to provide leadership and public goods.

My colleague Dan Drezner agrees with Susan at least with the impact of a second Trump administration. Dan is the Distinguished Professor of International Politics and Associate Dean of Research at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and among other things, the author of the Substack, Drezner’s World. In a FA piece entitled, “The End of American Exceptionalism: Trump’s Reelection Will Redefine U.S. Power”, Dan declares:

Trump will navigate world politics with greater confidence this time around. Whether he will have any better luck bending the world to his “America first” brand is another question entirely. What is certain, however, is that the era of American exceptionalism has ended. Under Trump, U.S. foreign policy will cease promoting long-standing American ideals. That, combined with an expected surge of corrupt foreign policy practices, will leave the United States looking like a garden-variety great power.”

 

He [Trump] believes that the U.S.-created liberal international order has, over time, stacked the deck against the United States. To change that imbalance, Trump wants to restrict inward economic flows such as imports and immigrants (although he likes inward foreign direct investment). He wants allies to shoulder more of the burden for their own defense. And he believes that he can cut deals with autocrats, such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin or North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, that will reduce tensions in global trouble spots and allow the United States to focus Inward.

For Susan the change in foreign policy is driven by the American public; for Dan the direction comes from Trump and his acolytes but the outcome appears to be the same. The end of American leadership as we’ve understood it for seven decades and more.

So how, or what will provide the leadership that can manage the global order? Who can help shape and critically, who can presumably stabilize the increasingly fractious international environment?  Positively, who can promote international development, energize the efforts to meet the climate crisis, and reform international financial reform and meet the growing debt crises for many? Who will energize the multilateral institutions that can promote peace and security and advance global governance? Where is the leadership?

Here Susan gives us a bit of a hint. As she suggests:

In this more fragmented, disordered world, US partners in Asia should also pursue more networked security cooperation and regional integration to safeguard peace and mitigate the negative effects of deglobalisation for their economies. Such measures are useful on their own merits, no matter who is in the White House, as the world is set to become a more difficult and dangerous place.

We have, at recent gatherings of the China-West Dialogue, been exploring the role of Middle Powers. I hope to turn back to the potential key roles that Middle Powers may bring to the growing threats to the global order. I think that may be a hopeful direction.  I will return to this subject.

Image Credit: ABC News

This Post first appeared as a Substack Post at Alan’s Newsletter. Feel free to comment and subscribe to Alan’s Newsletter.

https://globalsummitryproject.substack.com/p/the-impact-of-trump-20