Many critics about what is considered an enormous problem in the White House due to the presidential contradictory messages which reveal cracks in the national security.
There has been a warning concerning the use of force with recurring setbacks which may have political consequences that in the most benign scenario would only compromise Donald Trump re-election, but that in terms of nationhood, it is placing the United States in a faint-hearted mood.
Felicia Sonmez and David Lynch, two reporters from The Washington Post, approached the situation and found opinions ranging from Donald Trump running the government as a “reality TV show; trying to build more drama and trying to make foreign policy by tweet”, as well as the argument that his firmness has some effect on the weak, but it makes little impact in China, the European Union or Japan.
“This has been folly,” Booker said on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos”. We have a president that seems to be doing this like a reality TV show and trying to build more drama and trying to make foreign policy by tweet.”
According to those consulted, governing with threats based on position of power brings short-term results only if the style is ironic and does not recede because both the internal and external enemies of the nation notice hesitations in this pattern.
The danger step by step
The work published by The Washington Post, entitled “Trump’s erratic policy moves put national security at risk, experts warn”, takes as its immediate reference the current month, when Donald Trump presented “three policy changes” that highlight what has been defined as an “unbridled style of government.”
“Trump’s approach on three issues — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, tariffs on Mexico, and action against Iran — is politically risky for the president, who is increasingly employing brinkmanship in an effort to achieve key policy goals.”The Post report states.
With regard to the hesitation that leaked to the press over the suspension on the eve of an attack on several Iranian military targets, after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps knocked down an American drone, on Sunday Trump’s defenders, including Vice President Pence, argued that the president showed admirable caution in refusing to move forward with a military strike on Iran in light of the potential casualties.
“The president demonstrated the restraint that the American people, I know, admire and are grateful for,” Pence said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
He added: “Iran should not mistake restraint for a lack of resolve. All options remain on the table.”
The implications for 2020
After it became public the situation of recent times when polls paid by the Republicans placed Trump behind the competing Democrats, the old reaction of “killing the messenger” was triggered and thus Trump ordered the dismissal of some of the expert companies in public opinion that measured the conclusion taking the audience data.
So it is easy for the President’s critics to turn his often erratic approach into an issue for voters.
As the first Democratic debates on the 2020 presidential race begin on Wednesday, several White House contenders seized on Trump’s calling off the Iran strike as the latest in a pattern of reversals. Here is what The Post found:
1. Bernie Sanders, an independent candidate and Vermont´s Congressman, described Trump’s actions as similar to “somebody setting a fire a basket full of paper and then putting it out.”
2. The Democratic Senator from California, Kamala D. Harris, struck a similar note, telling CBS’s Ed O’Keefe, “I don’t believe that anyone should receive credit for a crisis of their own making.”
3. Senator Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, argued that Trump’s handling of Iran has meant that “even when there are strikes on tankers, we see again our allies very skeptical to even believe us right now.”
“This has been folly,” Booker said on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos”. We have a president that seems to be doing this like a reality TV show and trying to build more drama and trying to make foreign policy by tweet.”
Academic interpretations
Felicia Sonmez and David Lynch of The Post did not take only the usual views of the political world. Further, they consulted Larry Jacobs, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs, said that Trump’s behavior has generated confusion about what the country’s positions are.
“Ronald Reagan was very clear, there´s no ambiguity in his views about the world and his willingness to pursue them. None,” he said. “Sometimes he was criticized… but there was a clarity and a consistency and a pattern that was established.
With Trump, in contrast, “both our allies and our enemies are at a loss to understand what the president means,” he said.
With the idea of the professor in suspension, the report brought as a background the President´s recent behavioral thread. The Post believes that the results of Trump’s strategy on policy have been at best, mixed, and few issues offer as complete a picture of the president’s brinkmanship as his effort to reform U.S. trade policy.
Considering the hard facts, last month Donald Trump abruptly threatened to impose tariffs on all Mexican goods entering the country to force Mexico to tighten its southern border against migrants fleeing Central America. It gave Mexican authorities 10 days to show progress or face a 5 percent tariff on the approximately $346 billion in goods that Mexico ships each year to the United States.
Trump drew criticism for using trade to address an unrelated issue and for contradicting the spirit of the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada-Agreement, designed to facilitate trade among the North American neighbors.
But the threat prompted Mexican officials to race to Washington to negotiate tougher border security measures, ultimately including deployment of about 6,000 Mexican national guardsmen to the country’s border with Guatemala.
It wasn’t the first time Mexico had felt the sting of the president’s negotiating style. In late March, Trump threatened to close the border with Mexico in an earlier move to spur action against migrants. He backed down after an outcry from American business leaders who feared massive disruption to industrial supply chains.
Trump also came to the precipice of withdrawing the United States from the North American Free Trade Agreement on his 100th day in office, but pulled back after pleas from Mexican and Canadian leaders. He held the threat of quitting the deal over subsequent negotiations aimed at the new USMCA, which awaits congressional action.
Actions have consequences
Trump’s threats prompted Mexico and Canada to accept the provisions they had resisted in the negotiations that led to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation agreement negotiated by the Obama administration that Trump quit on his fourth day in the White House, according to Dan Ujczo, a trade attorney at Dickinson Wright.
“Whether one wants to admit it or not, the president is driving hard bargains and getting results,” Ujczo said. “The question will be at what cost in the mid to long term. That is, what happens when other countries start using the same tactics against the U.S.?”
Trump has also participated in serial rounds of tariff- heavy diplomacy with China. Last year he threatened to increase tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods from 10 percent to 25 percent, starting Jan. 1. But a month before the deadline expired, over dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Buenos Aires, Trump agreed instead to give negotiators 90 days to reach an agreement.
Days before that deadline, Trump again delayed, citing “substantial progress” in the talks. He did not set a new deadline, but in early May, after talks collapsed, he implemented the tariff hike.
He also began the process of imposing tariffs on another $300 billion in Chinese imports, which could create a fresh obstacle to reaching a trade deal with Beijing. Chinese officials have insisted that all tariffs be eliminated as part of any deal that addresses the president’s complaints about China’s trade practices.
“Now it’s more complex,” said one executive familiar with the trade talks, who who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential discussions.
“Trump’s threats work to some extent against weak targets, but not against stronger ones. Canada and Mexico, which are so dependent on exports to the United States, have been willing to make harsh concessions rather than risk serious harm to their own economies. Korea, which is so dependent on the U.S. security umbrella, was also willing to do a quick deal,” said Edward Alden, an economics professor at Western Washington University. “But bigger trading partners — China, the E.U., even Japan — have proved far less compliant.”
Translated by: José Espinoza
Noticias Newswire
