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A National Embarrassment




Trump has discovered a new tool - declaring a national emergency anytime he doesn't get what he wants from Congress or his trading partners.  He tried it out on the border wall and most recently declared a national emergency on the tech industry, banning sales and use of telecom equipment by foreign companies.  This ban is specifically aimed at Chinese-owned Huawei, which he and others have claimed is mining sensitive data through the use of their cellphones.

This is largely an attempt to stop Huawei from getting 5G technology from American-owned Qualcomm, which had reached a deal with the Chinese telecommunications company some months back, but was blocked by the FCC.  The Tech Cold War has been heating up since Trump took office.  He tried to first bully China by having Canada arrest the daughter of the Huawei owner for charges brought against her and the company for violating sanctions against Iran.  She has since been released on bail.

These actions have done much to undermine the trade deal the Trump administration has been trying to negotiate with China, which has resulted in yet another round of tariffs across the board.  Trump seems to think these hardball tactics work, proclaiming to his following that the economy is soaring because of the tariffs and that tens of billions of dollars are rolling into government coffers as the result of these new taxes.

Only his most die-hard supporters are buying it.  Farmers across America are feeling the pinch because China has retaliated in kind, cutting off agricultural imports from the US, and turning to Russia and Brazil.  Trump and his band of bully boys don't seem to realize that this is feeding straight into China's and Russia's broader ambition of creating a new trading block that stretches across both the Atlantic and Pacific to Brazil, Argentina, and eventually the entirety of Central and South America, which the US has turned its back on.   China has also locked up the African continent thanks to decades of development projects, while US efforts in the continent have largely gone for naught.

The US has never been more alone than it currently is under Trump.  His trade policies have undermined our relationships with traditional European allies, and he has created a testy relationship with Canada and Mexico, who signed onto USMCA solely because it was a last-minute deal before NAFTA expired, and the three countries are too economically intertwined to not have a trade agreement in place.  Only last week did Trump finally lift aluminum and steel tariffs that greatly impacted production in all three countries. 

His use of tariffs and now declaring national emergencies has severely eroded trust in the US as a trading partner.  This is pushing European countries back toward Russia and China as primary suppliers of oil, gas and durable goods, as the US can no longer be counted on.  Trump grumpily responds by trying to use sanctions on China to keep Europe in line, especially when it comes to tech goods.  Patience with the Trump administration is wearing thin, especially since its goal appears to be to break the EU apart so that he can pick and choose among countries as trade partners.

The Trump administration is fit to be tied it can't do business directly with European countries, that all trade has to go through Brussels.  Angela Merkel tried to explain this to him two years ago, but to no avail.  Since then he has billed himself as Mr. Brexit and has installed ambassadors in Europe who actively seek to undermine the EU, the most notorious being Richard Grenell as US Ambassador to Germany, which local officials are urging the government to expel.

This is not new.  George "Dubya" Bush tried to do the same when he was President, dividing Europe into old and new, as he reached out to the new Eastern European member states through the long arm of NATO.  But, Dubya didn't go to the ridiculous lengths Trump has gone to undermine our relationship with the European Union.  He understood how important our trade and military agreements were in terms of mutual security, or at the very least supporting him in his war in Afghanistan.

Trump seems to think he can do just fine with bilateral relationships.  Who needs multilateral trade and arms agreements?  It doesn't matter that Japan, China, Russia and South Korea were crucial in him getting to the negotiating table with North Korea.  He thinks he has a personal rapport with Kim Jong-un that trumps any negotiations on the sidelines.  Yet, he doesn't even have the patience to sit through a summit with North Korea's "supreme leader," abruptly walking out when his former lawyer gave a damning testimony of his relationship with the president before Congress.  Even when he has a golden opportunity to reach an arms agreement on his own terms, he fails to deliver.

Now Trump turns to Iran, using the threat of war to try to bring the Islamic Republic to the negotiating table for a new nuclear deal that he can sign his name to.  It's the same tactic he used on North Korea and no one is buying it, least of all Iran which has no interest in negotiating any deal directly with the US.  Iran is pushing its EU partners to stand up to the US, but so far the EU has laid low in this war of words, hoping it will blow over.  The only problem this time around is that we don't have "Tex" Tillerson and General "Mad Dog" Mattis to smooth things over.  We have "Pompous Mike" Pompeo and John "The Human Mustache" Bolton to further add to the incendiary rhetoric between the two countries.

Trump has now surrounded himself with a Celebrity Apprentice-like circle of advisers who are extremely hawkish and anxious to use a war to give the administration a greater use of executive authority. This is the so-called "unitary executive theory" that Dick Cheney was a big proponent of during the Dubya administration.  It would allow the White House to bypass Congress all together on foreign and domestic policy.

This descent toward autocracy makes the US look no better than China, which Trump demonizes to no end.  While it is true that China has taken advantage of trade policies, Trump's hubris isn't bridging the gap but rather burning whatever bridge there is left.  China feels increasingly empowered, and would love nothing more than to end US economic hegemony in the world.  If it can establish stronger economic ties with Russia, Brazil, India, Pakistan and even the EU, what is the US at that point other than a minor player? 

China has essentially called Trump's bluff and now it is time to put the cards on the table.  Trump has always been a terrible card player, relying on others to bail him out.   He is hoping the EU will back him, but he has so badly undermined this relationship that the EU folded.  Sorry, Donald, you are all alone now.  No national emergency is going to get you out of this one.

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