The View from Right Field

What Is Donald Trump’s Governing Philosophy? Does He Have One?

It is fascinating, and perhaps sort of funny, to see so many articles trying to come up with an overall policy or logic for Donald Trump’s statements and decisions.  The authors try to fit President Trump’s decisions into some kind of overall theory that explains both the decisions themselves and how they fit together.  It’s normally right-wing or conservative writers who are doing this because they are the ones who like Trump or at least like some of his decisions.  The ones on the left, and maybe some part of the center, dislike Trump so much that they cannot say anything about him other than that he is horrible, stupid, etc..

I say it is fascinating to see these people try to do this because it is so hard to come up with a theory that is able to tie these things together with some kind of consistency.  On the other hand, it’s a little bit funny to see them try to do this because, in addition to being hard, there is always the possibility that President Trump will say or do something the next day that blows their whole theory apart.

Bringing Back Manufacturing or Bringing Back Manufacturing Jobs? Manufacturing Will Cost Money. The Jobs Won’t Be Brought Back.

I am not certain what Donald Trump is trying to do with his tariffs.¹  Is he trying to get manufacturing jobs back or is he worried about the United States not having the manufacturing capabilities it needs for national security purposes?  Does he think that having more manufacturing jobs will make us richer?²  Or is it just a matter of him thinking we have been getting ripped off by China and the EU (among others) and he wants to “get even”?

Whatever the reason, President Trump apparently thinks tariffs are answer.  I’m not sure whether his idea is to leave the tariffs in place, thereby making products from other countries more expensive, so companies will make them here and we will get richer (because we’ll have more jobs or we’ll make stuff or something else).  Or he is using the tariffs as a club to get other countries to buy more stuff from us (by lowering whatever barriers to trade they have or just agreeing to buy more stuff from us so we will remove/lower the tariffs)?³  Or maybe it’s just about the deal.⁴

JD Vance, Iraq, and MAGA Foreign Policy

So many things are happening in Washington, so fast and so quickly, that if you don’t comment on them immediately, you may miss the chance to do so, because people have moved on to the next big thing – or the one after that.  But I think something JD Vance back on April 15 needs to be commented on, even if I am late in doing so, because (i) it’s wrong (on Iraq), (ii) it says a lot about how Trump supporters view US foreign policy and the world (also wrongly, in my view), and (iii) what it perhaps says about Vice President Vance.

In a conversation on UnHerd, a British site, Vice President Vance was talking about Europe, how much he loves Europe and Europeans.  And then he said this:

“Something I know a little bit more personally: I think a lot of European nations were right about our invasion of Iraq.  And frankly, if the Europeans had been a little more independent, and a little more willing to stand up, then maybe we could have saved the entire world from the strategic disaster that was the American-led invasion of Iraq.”

Instinct, Not Strategy

Not that we didn’t know this, but Donald Trump has explained how he would be making decisions on tariffs, and probably other things, in the coming weeks:

“Instinctively, more than anything else.  You almost can’t take a pencil to paper, it’s really more of an instinct than anything else.”

That is just not going to work.  Maybe instinct works in real estate deals and in politics, but it doesn’t work in government – and certainly doesn’t work in foreign affairs and international economics. 

It Would Be a “Reverse Nixon”, Not a “Reverse Kissinger” – Though Trump Couldn’t Do It Anyway

In last Saturday’s Financial Times, Edward Luce wrote on Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski.¹  At one point, in comparing the foreign policies they advised on with that of Donald Trump, Mr. Luce said: “Notions of Trump pulling off a ‘reverse Kissinger’ – bringing the Russians into America’s orbit, much as Kissinger exploited the Sino-Soviet split in the other direction – are fanciful.”  I certainly agree with Mr. Luce on the idea of President Trump doing something like that, but I disagree with Mr. Luce both as to what such a maneuver would be called – it would be a “reverse Nixon” – and, perhaps more importantly, whose idea the original policy was.  Certainly, Dr. Kissinger played an important role in the secret diplomacy that was required to accomplish the opening to China, but the credit for the policy and the idea behind it belongs to Richard Nixon.

The problem is that Richard Nixon has been blamed by so many for so much for so long, sometimes fairly (in the case of the Watergate coverup) and other times unfairly (for example, the exposure of Alger Hiss as a Soviet spy), that it has become almost impossible to give credit to Mr. Nixon for anything. 

Donald Trump and the Failure of Policy in Ukraine

As Donald Trump’s presidency continues, I get more and more worried, perhaps especially about foreign policy.  He is bad domestically, but I am hopeful we can overcome the problems he is causing here.  The damage he is causing in foreign affairs seems greater.  I don’t know why he is doing what he is doing, but here are some possibilities:

1. He a zero-sum kind of guy. 
2. He thinks almost everybody has played us for suckers and has taken advantage of us. 
3. He is very thin-skinned, and he thinks people are out to get him.¹  Also, he seems to take it personally when people disagree with him (especially on a deal he wants to get done).
4. I am not sure how much history he knows, but I fear it is not enough.  History does not repeat, but knowledge of history does inform.
5. Government is different than business; making agreements between countries is different than making agreements between companies.  I don’t think President Trump understands this.  He thinks deals are deals.  They aren’t.²

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.
  -----------
  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.