The View from Right Field

A Few Random Thoughts on Donald Trump – And Others

• Perhaps the thing that most explains the difference between how Donald Trump views the world, the economy, etc., and how I view them, is that President Trump thinks of pretty much everything as a zero sum game.  In every deal, maybe even in every interaction, there is a winner and a loser; and the amount the winner gains is pretty much equal to what the other side loses.  I don’t believe that.  President Trump does.
• If you are in a fight, it’s nice to have friends.  The United States no longer has as many friends it can count on in a fight – because if they can’t count on us, we can’t count on them.  We used to have lots of those kinds of friends, and we were safer because of it.  Now we don’t, so in order to have even close to the same level of safety, we are going to have to spend more money on defense, and we still may not be as safe.
• To the extent Americans, and some of our leaders, think (and have thought) we have been getting taken advantage of because we were spending a lot of money on defense, which allowed other countries to not spend their fair share on defense, some part of the blame for that rests on those other countries and their leaders for not spending on their own defense.  Here’s looking, for example, at you, Angela Merkel.¹  Even Barack Obama, the U.S. president that Chancellor Merkel liked the most, thought allies were free-riding on America and American defense expenditures.  Germany was happy to rely on America for defense and not spend much itself.  That has not worked out well for either of us.
  Germany was also willing to rely on Vladimir Putin not being Vladimir Putin.  That has not worked out well, either.
• Tariffs are a bad idea.  But then so are other trade barriers.  If we would all get rid of trade barriers, we would all be richer.  Unfortunately, American leaders have not believed in getting rid of trade barriers, i.e., free trade, for a long time.  It is a bipartisan problem.  But President Trump is making it worse.  Wars are bad; so are trade wars.
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  ¹ There are lots of others, too.

Trump Is an Embarrassment on Ukraine – And Potentially Dangerous Beyond That

I don’t know what Donald Trump is doing with respect to Ukraine.  This afternoon, in the United Nations General Assembly, the United States voted with Russia, Belarus, North Korea, and Nicaragua against a resolution condemning Moscow's invasion of Ukraine and supporting Ukraine's territorial integrity.

Then, this evening, the United States sided with Russia to get the United Nations Security Council to pass a resolution that called for an end to the war in Ukraine but without any criticism of Russia for starting the war.

Is Trump Trying To Do a “Reverse Nixon” With Putin?

In trying to explain why Donald Trump is sudden ripping on Ukraine and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and siding with Vladimir Putin and Russia, some people are asking whether President Trump and his people might be trying to do a “reverse Nixon”, i.e., trying to separate Russia and China, though in this case befriending Russia, as opposed to China as Richard Nixon did.

The Wall Street Journal‘s chief foreign correspondent, Yaroslav Trofimov, does an excellent job here of explaining why the two situations, Russia and Ukraine today as opposed to the Soviet Union and China back then, are very different.  There is no need for me to repeat what he says, though I do note there is another article, also in yesterday’s Journal, that talks about the increasing number of joint military exercises between Russia and China.  Which is different than the late 1960s/early 1970s, when the only joint military exercise the Soviets and the Chinese held was a border war between each other in 1969.

The Problems With Trump: #3 – Ukraine

With Donald Trump calling Volodymyr Zelenskyy a dictator, I worry President Trump will negotiate a deal with Vladimir Putin on Ukraine as bad as the deal he negotiated with the Taliban on Afghanistan in 2020.  While Joe Biden was the President who followed through on the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan, it was then-President Trump who negotiated the surrender agreement in the first place.

Is President Trump going to do the same thing in Ukraine?  I am increasingly worried that he might.  It he does, the questions then will be: (i) to what extent can Ukraine can continue to fight if the United States abandons them; and (ii) whether “Europe” will (and actually can) offer enough support to allow Ukraine to effectively continue to fight.

The Problems With Trump: #2 – Foreign Policy

Parts of Donald Trump’s foreign policy are unclear; other parts seem to be in conflict with each other.  Sometimes he seems mainly focused on eliminating our trade deficit; he appears to think we are losing (and for President Trump, “losing” is never good) when countries sell more stuff to us than they buy from us.¹  Other times he complains that the US is being taken advantage of when we spend more on defense than countries we are helping to protect spend on themselves.

Also, a thread goes through the thinking of many of President Trump’s appointees that we can’t afford to deal with all of the problems in the world.  We have to focus on our most important problems.  In this regard and to these appointees, China is our main adversary, so we have focus on them and let other countries deal with other problems.  For example, Europe should deal with Ukraine.² 

Hunter Biden. Grifter.

I wrote all I needed to write about Hunter Biden, and his grifting, ten years ago when it was disclosed that Hunter was getting paid by a Ukrainian gas company controlled by a top official in the former government of a pro-Russian president of Ukraine.  At the time, both the White House press office and Vice President Biden’s office said that Hunter Biden's activities were those of a private citizen and didn’t involve the U.S. government. 

It may have been true that what Hunter Biden was doing back then wasn’t illegal, but it was wrong.  The children of Presidents and Vice Presidents shouldn’t be getting paid by foreign governments or their affiliates, whether current or former.  I realize that it can be tough for children of famous/important people, but I can think of lots of children and grandchildren of presidents who haven’t needed to grift for a living.

It would have been better if, in 2014, somebody had told Hunter to knock it off.  If then-Vice President Biden couldn’t do it, and he apparently couldn't, it’s too bad somebody in the Obama administration didn’t do it for him.

The West’s Race to the Bottom in Ukraine – For Worst Policy

We have what looks like a race to the bottom for worst Ukraine policy among Joe Biden, Donald Trump, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.  After almost 1,000 days of war, President Biden finally gave Ukraine permission to use US weapons, including ATACMS, to actually attack Russian targets in Russia.  The story is that Biden was worried about Putin escalating (how about worrying about Putin winning) and about the US not having enough ATACMS for ourselves (how about ordering a lot more of them on an emergency basis, starting like almost 1,000 days ago).¹

Trump people are saying the Russians pushing the Ukrainians back might be good because it would make the Ukrainians more willing to negotiate.¹  Huh?  The problem is not the Ukrainians being willing to negotiate.  The problem is Putin being willing to negotiate when he is winning.  Why should he? 

The 35th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall

With everything going on in the world, it is good sit back and think back on some of the good things that have happened in our lifetime.  For example, today is the 35th anniversary of the Fall of the Wall.  What once seemed like something that would last forever is now almost a distant memory. 

I have written a number of posts about Berlin, and the Fall of the Wall, over the years.  You can find some of them listed in this post from November 7, 2014.

What’s More Important: The US Presidential Election or the Internal Contradictions in China?

While we have a presidential election in the United States today, I wonder whether what is going on in China might be more important.  I thought much same thing in 2020 when Jack Ma’s IPO for Ant Group was cancelled by Xi Jinping on the same day as the United States presidential election.  And even with everything that happened after that election, I think the cancellation of Ant Group IPO, and all that followed it, may have been more consequential. 

The contradictions of what is going on in China are shown in two articles in yesterday’s Financial Times.  On page 4, there is an article with the headline “China debates details of largest fiscal stimulus since pandemic”.  The article begins:

My Hope for Election Night: Gridlock

Our country has a lot of issues that need to be addressed. The problem is that neither presidential candidate nor their parties have any idea to fix them.  In fact, if either candidate and their party won control of both the White House and Congress, their proposals, if enacted, would probably make the situation even worse.

Therefore, what we need from this election is: Gridlock.  While gridlock and doing nothing would be bad, it would probably be less bad than the proposals of either candidate and his/her party.  So, if we can’t make things better and if we can’t even keep them the same, then let’s make them worse as slowly as possible.  And the way to do that is through gridlock: the Republicans will stop the Democrats from enacting their bad programs and the Democrats will stop the Republicans from enacting their bad ideas.