Four years ago, in the wake of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea, the world’s rich democracies expelled Russia from their annual gatherings: The Group of Eight became the Group of Seven. This week, as the G-7 heads of state met in Quebec, Canada, there have been ominous echoes. All six non-US members have issued a formal statement of “unanimous concern and disappointment” at President Donald Trump’s trade policy. “It will not be a G-7, it will be a G-6 plus one,” Bruno Le Maire, the French finance minister, declared.
The United States accounts for almost a quarter of global gross domestic product and more than half that of the G-7: It is too big to be booted from the club. But, less than 18 months into Trump’s tenure as president, the format of his diplomatic approach is increasingly evident. Facing a belligerent Russia, an increasingly authoritarian and assertive China and a dicey North Korean summit, Trump has hit upon a strange policy: alienate the few potential friends you have.
Why does he do this? The reasons can be grouped under three headings: haughtiness, ignorance of international relations and ignorance of economics.
A big driver of Trump’s behaviour is the desire to command the spotlight. He is wedded not so much to any policy as to being the loud guy at the dance. The trade war with China, the North Korea nuclear talks, the North American Free Trade Agreement renegotiation: All these have been on, off and then abruptly on again whatever has suited the president’s overriding craving for the next Trump-centric headline.
Does he believe that ZTE, the Chinese telecom equipment maker, should be sanctioned? Trick question! Trump imposed sanctions, then doubted them. Trump’s defenders argue his approach is part of his cunning. By keeping the adversary off guard, according to this interpretation, Trump gains the upper hand. But this defence fails to acknowledge that, in international relations, the art of the deal must be combined with the art of maintaining the deal. In a US business negotiation, if you sign a great deal, you can enforce it in court.
In diplomacy, however, there is generally no robust court you can appeal to. The deal will stick only if the other guy believes that you will stick to it. Trump’s handling of international relations extends to a further point. A lot of diplomacy is not about sharing private goods. It is about creating public goods: security, environmental protection and so on. In a US business negotiation, if a buyer gets a good price, the seller may be getting a bad price — and the seller ought to turn around and quickly sell elsewhere.
But when it comes to, say, climate change, “losing” because you feel that a deal burdens your country more than it burdens others has to be compared with really losing because your cities are flooded. Global public goods can be generated only through global cooperation. Getting some sort of deal is nearly always better than getting no deal. The perfect must not be the enemy of the good.
Finally, there is Trump’s economic dilemma. On Saturday, Trump tweeted, “When you’re almost 800 Billion Dollars a year down on Trade, you can’t lose a Trade War!” The experience of the 1930s, when tit-for-tat tariff hikes helped pull the world deeper into the Depression, appears to have been lost on him. Trump then added: “The US has been ripped off by other countries for years on Trade, time to get smart!” But the trade deficit to which he refers is not a sign of foreign cheating. So long as Americans spend more than they produce, the difference will have to be made up by imports. In an irony evidently lost on the president, the US tendency to overconsume is being exacerbated by his own tax cuts.
Since World War II, the United States has orchestrated the creation of a rules-based international order. It is a fragile construction: In the realm of international relations, there is no Hobbesian Leviathan to save us from the state of nature. But every US administration until now has understood that an attempt to create rules is preferable to an absence of rules; even when the United States failed to live by this principle, it at least paid lip service to it.
The current US administration has created a new standard. Instead of rules, it offers an infernal Twitter feed and instead of patient pursuit of public goods, it only brings a zero-sum hustle to the table.
— Washington Post
Sebastian Mallaby, author of “The Man Who Knew: The Life & Times of Alan Greenspan,” is the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations.
