Words to describe last week's presidential European travel are hard to come by. "Staggering" and "deeply worrisome" don't do justice to the disruptions caused by the president, and to the long-term consequences that impact the essential trust that binds us to friends and allies. It will be a week that will live in historians' retelling for decades.
But rather than dwell on the badgering of allies at NATO and in the UK - etched on the face of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg while Trump berated the alliance and Germany especially, and emblazoned on the front page of The Sun London tabloid in the wake of the abysmal Trump interview - two larger issues emerged from the trip:
- First and most immediate: what is Putin's next move? Will this be a repeat of the disastrous Kennedy-Khrushchev Vienna meeting in 1961, where Kennedy's reluctance to assert U.S. interests in Berlin led the Soviet leader to inflame the Berlin issue a few months later?
- It's tempting to make the Kennedy/Khrushchev comparison; but thanks to moves spurred by former Secretary of Defense Bob Gates and reinforced by Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, NATO forward deployments in the Baltics should deter Putin adventurism there.
- The biggest worries going in to the Helsinki summit were that Trump would execute another "preemptive concession" (as he did with Kim Jong Un) and suggest a suspension of NATO exercises in the Baltic or Black Seas; or that he'd work a deal for U.S. withdrawal of forces from eastern Syria in exchange for Russia help to limit Iranian fluence with Damascus.
- Thankfully, neither appeared to happen, although results of the two-hour one-on-one remain shrouded - except for leaks from the Russian Ambassador to the U.S.! But expect Putin pressure in both of these areas in follow-on talks, which President Trump just announced will evidently take place in Washington this fall.
- Second, what did the trip presage on the reshaping of the Republican party? Will the president's strong "non-interventionist," even "neo-isolationist" positions that surfaced repeatedly during the week resurrect long-dormant views within the party itself?
- Polls within the party and the reluctance of party leaders to speak out in the wake of the NATO and UK meetings suggest that the Trump dogma is having an effect. It's easy to forget the bitter intra-party fights in the early 50's that led General Dwight Eisenhower both to declare his party affiliation and to run for the presidency - to counter the anti-NATO and strongly isolationist "Mr. Republican," Robert Taft.
- Ike's win and Taft's death suppressed the party's turn inward; but it's always lurked just beneath the surface - for the party, and for the broader electorate, to include the Democrats. Trump's trip and his continuing appeal to millions in his party raise all the old goblins.
A final thought: especially the way the week of Trump's foreign forays ended - with the disastrous, almost toadying press conference with Vlad - the question is raised once again: what IS it that attracts Trump to Putin? Is there something the Russian president has over Trump? The easy explanation, offered by the National Review, is Trump vanity: extreme defensiveness over any questioning of the 2016 election results. A more disturbing suggestion, however, was offered in a recent article in the New York Magazine: "It's all exactly as it appears to be!" A week after Helsinki, that suggestion resonates even more strongly.
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WITH PRESIDENT TRUMP'S FIRST ROUND OF TARIFFS IN PLACE, LARGER THREATS LOOM ON THE HORIZON...IN ADDITION TO THE LATEST MOVE BY THE ADMINISTRATION TO IMPOSE AN ADDITION $200 BILLION IN TARIFFS ON CHINESE PRODUCTS, THE THREAT OF TARIFFS ON FOREIGN-MADE AUTOS, LIGHT TRUCKS, SUVS AND AUTO PARTS UNDER SECTION 232 OF THE TRADE EXPANSION ACT OF 1962 IS RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER.
IN THIS WEEK'S CABINET MEETING, TRUMP PROMISED "TREMENDOUS RETRIBUTION" IN REFERENCE TO EU TRADE POLICIES AND EUROPEAN-MADE CARS LESS THAN A WEEK BEFORE THE JULY 25 WHITE HOUSE VISIT BY EUROPEAN COMMISSION PRESIDENT JEAN-CLAUDE JUNCKER.
WE WILL BE HOSTING A CONFERENCE CALL WITH CHAD BOWN, ONE OF WASHINGTON'S TOP TRADE ANALYSTS, TO DISCUSS TRUMP'S LATEST TARIFF PROPOSALS AND THEIR IMPACT.
JOIN US ON TUESDAY, JULY 24TH AT 10:00 AM ET
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About Chad Bown:
Chad P. Bown joined the Peterson Institute for International Economics as a senior fellow in April 2016. His research examines international trade laws and institutions, trade negotiations, and trade disputes. With Soumaya Keynes, he co-hosts Trade Talks, a weekly podcast on the economics of international trade policy.
Bown previously served as senior economist for international trade and investment in the White House on the Council of Economic Advisers and most recently as a lead economist at the World Bank, conducting research and advising developing country governments on international trade policy for seven years. Bown was a tenured professor of economics at Brandeis University, where he held a joint appointment in the Department of Economics and International Business School for 12 years. He has also spent a year in residence as a visiting scholar in economic research at the World Trade Organization (WTO) Secretariat in Geneva.
Bown is also currently a research fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) in London and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Since 2011 he has co-directed, with Petros C. Mavroidis of Columbia Law School, an annual program of scholars providing legal-economic assessments of WTO case law and jurisprudence that are published with Cambridge University Press. He currently serves on the editorial boards of a number of journals, including Economics & Politics, International Economics, Journal of International Economics, Journal of International Economic Law, Journal of International Trade Law and Policy, Journal of World Trade, Review of International Organizations, and World Trade Review.
