This post is prompted by my own FB feed, where my libertarian and moderate “reluctant Trumper” acquaintances now seem to be fully on board the Trump “Eff the G7” train. This being GD, I wish I had better cites, but Trump’s approval rating is on the rise and the comments under this Brietbart article are pretty jubilant about Trump being the first Republican to finally stand up to the EU, whatever that means.
I understand that Republicans and Democrats have apparently flip-flopped on free trade (ironically, back when I was a teenager, free trade was one of the few things I could really get behind on the Republican platform), but I’m still left to wonder - What the hell is going on here? 15 years ago Republicans lost their shit when France didn’t support the US in what was clearly a boneheaded invasion of Iraq. Now they’re perfectly content to stand behind Trump as he pulls the US out of agreements with our historical allies left and right (Iran, Paris), attacks NATO for not paying their fair share, and now starts trade wars with Canada and threatens the entire G7 if they don’t kowtow to his demands.
The cynic in me says that this is just a case of Republicans not actually having an opinion on anything as long as it pisses off liberals, but there’s got to be an actual reason, right?
I’m pretty sure the platform of the Republican party is to be anti-left and anti-globalists, “america first” right now. The G7 goes against those things. I don’t think that’s cynicism, I think it’s realism.
Because we have a nucleus of people in this country who ardently want to go back to the fifties. If Trump brought back American cars that got 8 MPG, they’d probably cheer.
Fifties? You mean 20s and early thirties. During the fifties we stood with our allies, and Ike was anything but an isolationist.
America First was the slogan of Nazi sympathizers who, if they had been in charge, would have left us less prepared for WW II than we were.
I think a lot of people do see the world as a zero-sum game. Which means with any action, there is a winner and a loser. By that logic, if France and Germany are upset at something Trump did, that must mean it’s good for the US. And if liberals are upset at something, it must be good for conservatives.
It’s xenophobia. Trump is a classic fascist who excels at the blame game, and Trumpists like to blame other people. Right now it’s Canada and the G7. Trumpists don’t put a lot of thought into this stuff; Trump says to hate the G7, so they do.
It’s fascinating how quickly Trumpists have picked up the “270 percent dairy tariff” meme from Trump. Go to their places on the Internet; they repeat it over and over. It’s disconnected from any sort of sensible examination of trade policy, or the fact the US has similar tariffs to protect favoured industries, but Trump said it, it’s a big number, and it gives them someone to hate.
People don’t understand trade.
The lack of understanding of trade is not a Trumpist thing; it’s common. Leftists don’t like international trade, either, and many of the same Canadians who today are huffing over Trump’s position were just weeks ago anti-free-traders who’d assure you up and down that the TPP was a terrible idea. More than half of Canadians opposed the original FTA with the USA.
The benefits of free trade are hard to grasp and rarely personal, while the myths against it tend to fit neatly into very common logical fallacies.
Republican politicians, tea-party populists excluded have not changed their minds, but are criticising the president.
Big republican funders have not changed their minds. The Kochs’ are for instance pumping money into campaigns for free-trade.
On the voter end Trump fans come in two flavours. There’s the low information, falls for all of Trump’s propaganda crowd, who never really liked how free-trade moves blue collar jobs out of rich countries anyway.
And there’s the slightly more rational ones who think it’s problematic but think things will either blow over or the rest of the world will give in to Trump’s hard ball negotiation tactics.
It’s going to take a serious or prolonged economic downturn for the Trump loving masses to accept that he’s genuinely sawing off the branch they are sitting on.
It profits one little to ask on this board why Republicans/conservatives/Trump supporters think or do anything.The responses will be tailored to fit the superficial/cartoonish/evil image of such people that the poster in question carries in his head, and will have little to do with reality. Kudos to the OP for recognizing that the “because it pisses off liberals” motive is likely not the actual motive behind conservative support for Trump’s America-first stance.
The truth is that many on the right have long felt that the U.S. has spent tons of money keeping EU countries safe from outside aggression, and that without the protective umbrella the U.S. provides, the citizens of these countries would all be living miserable lives under communist dominion. Many on the right also feel that EU countries benefit enormously from trade with the U.S. and perhaps unfairly so, and that in return for keeping them safe and adding to their prosperity, we get mostly snobbery, condescension, criticism, insults and dislike in return.
There is also the feeling the the U.S. cannot count to any degree on the support of most EU countries in conflicts with other countries. And of course many Trump supporters disapprove of the liberal nature of most EU countries’ societies and politics.
And then there is the fact that much of the impetus for the creation of the EU in the first place was to create an economic and political entity equal to the U.S. and therefore better able to oppose it economically.
So in short, Trump voters feel that the U.S. has sacrificed much and gained little from its relationships with the countries of the EU, that they are basically allies in name only, and that rather than sucking up to them the way Democratic administrations, as birds of a liberal feather are prone to do, it’s high time the U.S. began to look after its own interests first in our dealings with the countries of the EU and Canada (which, apart from its physical location is largely indiscernible from European countries in its politics and in its scorn for the U.S.).
And a quibble: One would have to go back quite a ways to consider Iran an ally of the U.S.
OK, but why? This was not the position of Republican politicians even a mere 20 years ago. One doesn’t need an advanced understanding of global politics to understand that the US has benefited immensely from investments in the EU and other countries. We have military bases all over the world that we use to advance US interests in pretty much every place the sun shines. How many military bases do our allies have on US soil? For decades after WWII, the US used it’s pocketbook to buy influence on an unprecedented scale. What I think we’re seeing now is that our historical allies are basically going to move on without us, and we’re going to lose the influence that we’ve taken for granted.
Is the thinking that being the dominate player in global politics just isn’t worth the (relatively small) financial investment that we make annually to other countries? If so, would Republicans be OK with shutting down overseas military installations and losing the global reach that goes along with them? And finally, why didn’t Republicans feel that way in the 90s? Is it because the cold war was still fresh in everyone’s minds and having a global impact to counter the threat of communism was worth the squeeze then, but not now?
They ignore the fact that those deals were negotiated from a position of strength by the US and that we’re getting our goods cheap thanks to what is essentially slave labor in some cases.
This is the same bullshit that I have to hear every day as a union member about how unions are robbing businesses and crippling them, all shouted loudly and indignantly from a comfortable seat at the top of the heap.
In that case wouldn’t we be likely to be maneuvering to keep that influence, or as much of it as possible, rather than pulling back from it?
I think the negative conservative view of Europe goes back a good deal further than the 90s. One thing to remember is that the Republican base has long been dissatisfied by its politicians, who largely have done nothing once they’ve been elected. The reason Trump was elected is that he was perceived as being someone finally who would act upon the desires of the country’s Republican base. It’s not so much that the thinking has changed that much since the 90s as it is that now there’s someone in office who is simpatico with that thinking and is willing to act on it.
Secondly, I believe the internet has served to increase conservative resentment toward Europe because now people are more acutely aware of the attitudes of Europeans toward the U.S. and Americans in general than they were isn the 90s, when their objections were mostly philosophical and in the abstract. So to whatever degree Republican thinking may have changed since the 90s I would look to the internet as being the primary reason.
Honestly it strikes me that the cohort around Trump are of the opinion that moving from a brief apex of hyperpower might to a first among equals is unacceptable and it’ll be a beggar thy neighbourgh clawing to maintain global preeminence.
And, I think that Trump has convinced many of them that, if the U.S. “finally starts playing hardball” with other countries on trade, all of those good-paying blue-collar jobs will return to the U.S.
Pretty much this, especially the second point. It’s ironic, to me, to hear lefties railing against Trump on trade or taking us out of the TTP agreement (or NAFTA) when this has been a pretty standard left wing position for much of my life. Sanders in his bid to become the Dem candidate pretty much agreed with this aspect, and even forced Clinton to do a public about face. So, it’s hard to see how the public WOULDN’T be susceptible to this argument since they have been hearing it for decades from many Democrats, and now hear it from Trump, who himself is both an idiot and stupid to boot. And it’s pretty difficult to explain to people why it isn’t a zero sum game that has to have a winner and loser, or that in many cases the US gets other, less tangible benefits out of such free trade deals than purely profit.
I think that the left is reaping what they have sowed as the seeds of protectionism and anti-globalization have been repeatedly put into the public field, and now the Republicans and the right are also reaping the ignorance they have sowed for decades as well. It’s a perfect storm of populist stupidity which, I hope, we can weather before we relearn the lessons of the past as to why we mainly junked protectionism and tariffs and started agreements for more open trading.
Assuming a competent and rational president: yes, yes we would. That’s not a reasonable assumption, though. Any argument based on the rationality or sensibility of the current administration is a really shitty argument, because this administration has utterly failed to display either quality.