Trump is the first president to challenge that order in principle. His practice has been more interesting. In negotiations with Mexico, Canada, and China, the president has used the credible threat of closing America’s huge market to pry open theirs, giving American producers fair access. Europe is next in line for that bracing treatment. Although Trump’s rhetoric has been nationalist, the net effect has actually been globalist.At the end of World War II, the U.S. was the only large developed nation which sustained essentially no domestic damage. We could afford to settle for disadvantageous-to-us trade arrangements as a subsidy to the many bombed-all-to-hell nations elsewhere, effectively as a part of our Marshall Plan for post-war reconstruction. European (and other) nations were only too glad to take advantage of these arrangements, became accustomed to them, and over time assumed they were permanent.
Places that needed help in 1945 no longer do so, and haven’t for some decades. I’ve seen 1990 video of a young Donald Trump, as a budding tycoon, interviewed about this issue and his views then and now are the same.
Namely, Trump believes it is time for Uncle Sam to stop being everyone’s patsy. We’re no longer the only “adult” in the room, the other nations have grown up and its time we dealt with each other as independent adults. And like adult children living in their parents’ basement, they resist self-sufficiency - both economic and military. He gives ‘em the tough love they need, but don’t want.
