FINANCIAL TIMES
How Donald Trump is empowering China In
uniting America’s allies against it, the president has done the
unthinkable
Edward Luce
Donald Trump is about to make history by shaking hands with an
adversary. Indeed, he will greet six of them at the same time. No
breakthrough is likely.
Following the G7 summit, Mr Trump will fly to Singapore to meet Kim Jong
Un. Expect a triumph. Peace will be declared on the Korean peninsular.
Those who think I am joking should mute the sound and study the body
language. Then decide for yourselves whose company Mr Trump prefers —
America’s partners, or the most lethal autocrat on the planet. You can
guess what a visiting Martian would say. It is
hard to decide which event — a failed “G6 plus one” summit in Canada or
a successful one with North Korea — is more incredible. But the former
wins. By uniting America’s largest allies against the US, Mr Trump has
pulled off something unthinkable. The sheep are abandoning the shepherd.
Without America, the G7 would not exist. It is the closest thing the
west has to a steering committee. That is why China, which is the
world’s second-largest economy, was never invited into the club. It was
also why a westernising Russia was added to the group in 1998. But
Russia was a black sheep. The group returned to seven after Russia
annexed Crimea in 2014. What
does a flock do without its shepherd? Fable would suggest that they are
picked off by wolves. That is one outcome of a prolonged US absence.
Even before Mr Trump took office, countries such as Germany, the UK and
France were rolling out the commercial red carpet for China against
Washington’s wishes. But they kept unity in Nato. And they stuck to
script at the G7. Mr Trump is now making that very difficult. At the G7
finance ministers’ meeting last weekend, Steven Mnuchin, the US Treasury
secretary, was in a minority of one. It takes some doing to push Brexit
UK into Europe’s arms. It takes even more to browbeat Japan into an
opposing camp. A
less fabled outcome is that the sheep stick together and keep the wolves
at bay. That may be less unlikely than it sounds. For the time being,
Europe, Canada and Japan are united against Mr Trump’s trade
belligerence.
Theory suggests that Mr Trump should divide the G7 by playing
favourites. That is how he would bring about the bilateral world that he
seeks. For example, he might separate Britain from the flock by offering
it an exemption from the section 232 national security tariffs after its
European divorce is wrapped up next year. Then he could sweet talk the
prospect of a UK-US trade deal. He could prise Italy from the group by
flattering its new populist government. Germany might waver if Mr Trump
simply promised to talk seriously about things. Were
Mr Trump to play such tactics, it would serve his strategic goal. What
he supposedly wants — and what his America First doctrine implies — is a
post-multilateral world. That is a transactional jungle in which the US
has size advantage in every negotiation. It is a series of one-plus-ones
in which Mr Trump is always bigger than the other. Almost nobody wants
such a world, including most of America’s business community. It would
reduce everyone’s growth and fragment global supply chains. But it is
not an illogical vision. Size would dictate that the US always had the
upper hand. That
is where Mr Trump’s philosophy breaks down. America First requires
diplomatic skill. You need knowledge of those you want to divide and
rule. Then you pick them off. Yet Mr Trump is doing the opposite. When
was the last time the west sounded so united? There are two explanations
of Mr Trump’s actions. The first is that he is incompetent. He knows the
kind of world he wants — a return to the 1950s — but he is too foolish
to figure out how to maximise his chances of realising it. There is
evidence to back that case. The
second is that Mr Trump’s id is bigger than his ego. Freud likened the
ego to the controlling rider and the id to the wild horse. Mr Trump’s
ego wants a mercantilist world. But his id craves revenge. Punishing
America’s partners for years of allegedly ripping her off is
incompatible with separating them from each other. It is hard to do
both. The
result is rolling confusion. On the face of it, Mr Trump’s chief
adversary is China. It has by far the largest trade surplus with the US.
Yet last week Mr Trump abandoned his biggest leverage over China by
giving its telecoms company, ZTE, a reprieve from US law. At the same
time he escalated a fight with Canada, which has a minor trade deficit
with the US. Can the west survive such divisions? In the short term,
perhaps. But the wolves are biding their time. |