ADVERTISEMENT

Donald Trump's Trade War Strategy Is Easy to Grasp

Donald Trump's Trade War Strategy Is Easy to Grasp

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Hugh Hewitt, a conservative pundit and radio host, took to the Washington Post over the weekend to offer an ode to President Donald Trump for being frank and refreshingly lucid.

“America’s enemies are on notice,” Hewitt observed. “The president is no longer an eloquent pushover professor-president but a ruthless real estate developer and television network brawler-president whose principle weapons are blunt candor and walking away from the table.”

Perhaps there’s a slight chance Hewitt doesn’t know that Trump is a serial bankruptcy artist and middling property mogul, and that “The Apprentice” wasn’t real. But I think the reason the writer is spinning cotton candy – especially in service of an essay that takes on Trump’s global diplomatic and military stances as well as his dealings with Congress – is that he, like many of the president’s most ardent supporters, wants to believe that a broad strategy informs Trump’s thinking and actions.

In that construct, Trump is the wily outsider with boatloads of business experience who’s forcing Washington and the world to reconsider their hidebound ways. “Whether it’s Nancy Pelosi, the Chinese trade negotiators or the North Korean dictator, Trump will do a real deal or nothing at all,” Hewitt writes. “And he won’t be played. He will just walk away.”

Yeah, no. 

Trump, bumbling haphazardly and randomly from one business venture to the next, was never much of a strategic thinker in his pre-politics career. He certainly wasn’t going to start planning and plotting strategically once he entered the White House. Contrary to Hewitt’s take, Trump has already been played repeatedly during his presidency and, as his decision-making becomes more reckless and ill-informed, the U.S. runs the risk of getting played along with him. Look no further than the president’s decision last Thursday to impose heavy tariffs on Mexico from June 10 unless the country restricts the flow of migrants across the U.S. border.

By most reliable accounts, Trump didn’t reach that decision methodically. The White House apparently didn’t solicit advice from the business community or from trade experts within the GOP before Trump tweeted his decision on Thursday evening. Within the president’s inner circle, three people reportedly pushed hardest for the tariffs: Stephen Miller, a chief policy adviser who has no experience with trade policy or business; Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel whose career as a commercial litigator included trade regulation; and Peter Navarro, a senior trade adviser whom Jared Kushner helped Trump hire by randomly browsing Amazon for books about China and trade — and who, during a television appearance last week, demonstrated that he doesn’t understand how tariffs work.

The fallout from the proposed Mexican tariffs has already been felt in the securities markets and the business community. Should tariffs be applied in force, U.S. consumers will have to pay more for many products. And the strategic payoff? Unless Mexico figures out how to address immigration flows coming largely from other central American countries in the next week, it may be unable to avoid Trump’s penalty. Mexico and Canada had already agreed to a new trade pact with the U.S., so that’s a pretty unfortunate result.

Perhaps Trump was making a political wager, betting that his core supporters will vote for him based on how hard he cracks down on immigration between now and the 2020 presidential election. While that at least hints at some form of calculation from the White House, if Trump’s tariff salvos do hurt trade, and if that hurts the economy and the domestic job market gets dinged, some of those same voters might care a whole lot less about immigration.

In truth, it’s hard to discern a sophisticated strategy informing a potential trade war with Mexico, but, as in all things Trump, it’s much less difficult to spot motivation. He likes to portray himself as a man of action, unencumbered by Washington’s bureaucracy and able to straddle the globe like a colossus, hence the gushing from Hewitt. Trump wants to pose as the titan who can solve all of America's problems in one fell swoop, regardless of their complexity. Yet most of the things confronting him can’t be solved that way.

The president also has fresh wounds to remind him how tricky it is to navigate the ins and outs of Capitol Hill, and he’s looking for easier wins. Two deeply experienced members of Congress, Senator Charles Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, ran circles around him during the border wall negotiations late last year; about as strong an example as you’re going to get of Trump being played. So he has gravitated toward his most unilateral of presidential powers, particularly issues around trade and national security that allow him to put on a show of force.

Here again, though, experience and expertise matter. When you boast, as Trump did, that you and a dictator like North Korea’s Kim Jong Un “fell in love,” it’s hard to convince the world of your own all-conquering might when your lover continues to pursue threatening missile tests.

Trump’s machismo has been in full force in his warnings to Iran, but when it actually comes to sending U.S. military forces to the Persian Gulf, the potential dangers of doing so – and the mechanics of doing it effectively – seem to overwhelm a president and a White House constantly tipsy from chaotic management.

Back at home, there are still some domestic issues that Trump can’t keep himself from addressing, with impeachment uppermost among them; and bluster is his go-to mode of communication here too. He regularly says he doesn’t care if he gets impeached and the process would be worse for Democrats than for him. Trump may believe that. But like trade wars, military engagements in the Arab world, dances with dictators, and policy battles in Congress, the reality of an impeachment may be much more complex and potentially debilitating than any amount of showboating and posturing lets on.

Trump’s game doesn’t involve sophisticated deal-making feints and forays as observers like Hewitt suggest. Trump’s game is just a game. And he doesn’t want it to catch up with him.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Boxell at jboxell@bloomberg.net

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Timothy L. O’Brien is the executive editor of Bloomberg Opinion. He has been an editor and writer for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, HuffPost and Talk magazine. His books include “TrumpNation: The Art of Being The Donald.”

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.