Two weeks into US President Donald Trump’s administration and many people are already exhausted by the US leader’s zone-flooding approach. His government keeps everyone off-kilter, unable to process one destabilising move, such as his attempt to freeze federal grant spending, before it is off to the next.
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Following through on escalating threats to start what The Wall Street Journal called “the dumbest trade war in history” – and violating his own deal with Canada and Mexico, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement – he parcelled out his North American trade war announcements on Saturday night. This ensured his name would remain at the top of everyone’s mind, even during the hours when we might expect a reprieve from breaking news.
The implications of this new trade war for the post-World-War-II global order that kept the US safe are staggering, so you might have missed what appeared to be actual policy continuity with former president Joe Biden’s approach that came through in an extensive interview with Trump’s new Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“The way the world has always worked is that the Chinese will do what’s in the best interests of China, the Russians will do what’s in the best interest of Russia, the Chileans are going to do what’s in the best interest of Chile and the United States needs to do what’s in the best interest of the United States,” Rubio said in his interview with Megyn Kelly.
He continued: “Where our interests align, that’s where you have partnerships and alliances; where our differences are not aligned, that is where the job of diplomacy is to prevent conflict while still furthering our national interests and understanding they’re going to further theirs.”
Jake Sullivan and Kurt Campbell could not have said it better themselves. Their version of this was the Biden administration’s “invest, align, compete” policy, excepting that Team Biden would not have shown such deference to the Kremlin.
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