Trump ‘uniquely consistent for decades’: Singapore’s Vivian Balakrishnan

Singapore’s top diplomat said on Wednesday that United States President Donald Trump had held the same views on free trade and immigration for decades, despite being widely seen as erratic and among the most unpredictable of American leaders.

Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan was responding at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum to a question on how his country would navigate Trump’s less consistent, more freewheeling and unilateralist approach.

Balakrishnan pointed to a 1988 interview with American host Oprah Winfrey in which Trump said that other countries were living like kings while the US was not, and the American people were “tired of seeing the United States ripped off”.

“President Trump as a person, in fact, has been uniquely consistent for decades … And I think people don’t give enough marks for that. So he is consistent, it’s just that his methodology, his presentation, is somewhat novel, and people react to that.

“But my point is, American policy under President Trump, in fact, is reflecting [his] long-held, deep convictions,” the Singapore minister said.

He explained that it was unusual in human history to have a benign hegemon like the United States and that it was reasonable for the American voter to question why the country should underwrite a system, under which the rest of the world, and especially a big competitor, seemed to have “profited” from.