Bluster and outrage work (after a fashion) as a negotiating tactic when you’re up against a choice of counterparties for a one-shot relationship.
Say developer Trump wants to build a hotel. He approaches three landowners with three different parcels and browbeats all of them. Two tell him to go screw himself and one caves and sells for half price, then promises himself never to deal with developer Trump again. Which hotel gets built? Developer Trump is a success.
Say President Trump wants to improve trade terms with China. He approaches the one and only Chinese government and browbeats them. They will be in power decades after he’s gone. They tell him to go screw himself. And get even at their leisure. Which trade terms improved? Which side won? President Trump is a failure.
All this (both ways) is Negotiating 101. Read any book on the topic and it’ll explain when “my way or the highway” is a good tactic and when it’s a suicidal tactic.
The big difference in international relations is that for the stuff that really matters you don’t have a choice of counterparties. And you will be making more than one deal with every counterparty over decades and eventually centuries. In that circumstance there’s a much larger need for win-win dealing. And for long-term thinking, fact-based decision-making, and civility.
Trump’s a one-trick pony who’s in a new arena where his best trick only fits about 1% of the problems he’ll face.
My view is that it isn’t much about Trump it’s mostly about his constituents. I doubt he really cares very much about policy, except to the extent policy affects his own wealth, or his popularity.
His inauguration speech was a simplistic appeal to nationalism which always seems like a good idea to short term tribalists. His actions on his first day were grandstanding - while he still had the public’s full attention he made it appear that he had moved quickly and decisively on a couple of election promises. I doubt Trump would see it as important that much actually change about trade deals. He (or his advisors) will know that not much will change for the blue collar ex-manufacturing workers who voted for him in key seats, whether he opts out of international trade agreements or not. But the key thing is for Trump’s supporters to *perceive *Trump as having done something.
In other words I don’t think it’s so much about Trump not recognizing what’s to America’s benefit and what isn’t; it’s about his constituents not recognizing it, and Trump knowing they won’t recognize it. And while I agree that Trump isn’t likely to be the type of guy to pursue good long term policy and await good long term results, he recognizes that his constituents aren’t “that type of guy” either.
Totally. IMO the $64Billion question about Trump is whether he intends to try to actually govern or he merely intends, *a la *Berlusconi, to enrich himself and his cronies while partying like mad and receiving adoration from his supporters in the cheap seats.
I honestly don’t know which way to handicap this one. We shall see.
I made a comment in another thread that the folks who attended his inauguration arrived either in a pickup truck or in a personal jet. And that one or the other of those groups would be disappointed 4 years hence.
Clearly the home run for Trump would be to actually help the personal jet set while fooling the pickup truck set into beleiving they got helped. It just might work.
[QUOTE=Wesley Clark]
I don’t know much about it, but doesn’t China has more protectionist policies than the US?
If so, doesn’t that show a major economy can engage in protectionism and have it work?
[/QUOTE]
Who’s better off; the average American, or the average Chinese?
Given that the average American is better off, how do we know Chinese protectionist policies do work? Maybe they’d be better off with less protectionism.
Even that, as bad as it would be, is better than what’s he’s actually doing: he isn’t partying, he’s whining and moaning when people observe, factually, that his party isn’t the best in the world ever.
He’s so insecure, that the fact that anyone isn’t adoring him makes him crazy with bitter resentment.
He’s going to make a major policy of hurting California, New York, Illinois, and Massachusetts, because they voted against him.
China’s having a hard time growing up economically speaking, and it’s going to get far worse before it gets better. At the rate they are going the entire country will be a an environmental disaster before long. Europe is so inundated with problems including finance, brexit, immigrant swell and other highly impacting economic issues, they are starting to look like another social/economic catastrophe waiting too happen. The rest of the world including Africa, Russia, the Mideast, oceana - meh.
They ALL need us ALOT more than we need them. A little protection from the dumbassery rub-off effect that always goes along with international relations might provide a little welcome respite.
I’m not so sure. China is moving on reducing CO2 output faster than the US. They have made a real start on cracking down on unbridled industry at the expense of water and air. China has the advantage of a long term view. The US and other democracies are (more and more) being ruled only with a view to winning the next election.
Brexit is a bump in the road. Immigrants are a social problem but (as the US itself attests) immigrants actually tend to create wealth long term. They work like crazy and create demand. I think you exaggerate.
China’s having a hard time growing up economically speaking, and it’s going to get far worse before it gets better. At the rate they are going the entire country will be a an environmental disaster before long.*
“Slow growth” by post-1979 China standards is still great by most other countries’ standards. As for the environment, once countries get richer they start to care more about the environment and pass tougher environmental laws. Brazil is a good example here (although the strides they’ve made in protecting their rain forests and savannahs may not count for much if they get screwed over by global warming). We can expect China to become more concerned about the environment over time.
Europe has its share of problems right now and I suspect there is going to be an intense reaction against immigration and multiethnic / multicultural ideals in the coming decades, especially in the east. But it’s worth pointing out, among the leadrs of European ethnic nationalist movements, just about none of them is as ignorant (or as extreme right on economic issues) as Trump. Not even the actual quasi-fascist parties in places like Hungary.
It’ll play better and better within the electorate the more of the opposition he can have disenfranchised/deported/killed.
My mother, who voted for Obama once, reblogged a meme on Facebook today that really scared me. If she’s gone round the bend to thinking that Obama was a “Muslim dictator” and that Donald Trump is the savior of Christendom, then we’re in trouble.
Liberal democracy, the system I grew up under, is under siege. I now think that when psychos on the right said they hated “liberals” and “democrats,” they really meant it, and we thought they were just using the words wrong for partisan reasons. We let that go too long. We’re going to have an illiberal society, even if democracy has to be destroyed. And a lot of “patriots” will cheer it.
I know that’s not your question. OK, how does N. Korea work economically? How does it work* politically?*