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Tag: u.s. trade policy

  • How Europe Can Respond to Trump’s Greenland Imperialism

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    That is interesting, but it’s not exactly ideological. It’s that he sees European weakness and wants to exert power.

    That is true. When Trump first came to power, there was some very interesting analysis from historians trying to gain an understanding of Trump’s world view. Something that they figured out was that, throughout his career, President Trump has held a strong belief that there was something totally wrong that, after the end of World War Two, countries like Germany and Japan were able to do so well. In his understanding, it did not make sense that the United States, the United Kingdom, and even the Soviet Union won the war, but the Germans and the Japanese were doing so well. And then it transformed into “America won, so why are Europeans living better than us? Why do they have better cars?” Etc.

    And I do believe that world view stayed with him. Moreover, he does not understand what the European Union is. Europeans believe in win-win scenarios. They do believe that you really can find a way to compromise. If there is a religion of European politics, it is about compromise and consensus. And then you have somebody like Trump, who’s not interested in this.

    I was talking to an American analyst, a colleague of mine, and he made an observation, which I found profound, but will probably seem trivial to you. He said President Trump had a successful business career in many respects, but he was not spectacularly successful in one business that he tried, and this was the casino business. The problem is that in the casino business, in order to win, you should try to create the illusion that others are winning.

    I think that’s pretty good. I don’t find that trivial, actually.

    This was looking like a Crimean moment. So trust in the United States was very much based on the fact that, regardless of our differences, Europe can rely on the Americans when it comes to Russia, and now nobody believes it anymore.

    When you say a Crimean moment, I assume you’re referring to Russia taking Crimea twelve years ago, and that that was only the beginning of their designs on Ukraine, and that Trump’s desire to seize Greenland could similarly be a first step. Is that what you meant?

    No. It is that in 2012 and 2013, prior to the invasion of Crimea, President Putin’s popularity had declined a bit, and there had been some protests in Russia. And then suddenly you have basically this super-majority of support that emerges after he annexes Crimea. And, in my view, President Trump also thinks that if suddenly, overnight on July 4, 2026, Greenland becomes part of the United States, then America is going to understand how great they have become. And I do believe this is really scaring many in Europe because they imagine that this is going to be a politics that others want to imitate.

    I think Trump is totally wrong about how Americans would react to that, but it also just might not matter. And that in itself is scary enough. Are there off-ramps you see?

    I believe there is going to be a group of countries, including those in Eastern Europe, saying, “Listen, let’s talk seriously. We are going to recognize the strategic dimension of Greenland, but what we cannot talk about is America owning it.” And here President Trump basically has an option. Either he’s going to say, “I achieved what I wanted to do. I never meant owning it. It was just about a deal, and now we are going to, for example, increase our military presence there, or it is going to be our companies that are going to develop some of the rare-earth resources of Greenland.” Something like this can happen. But my feeling is that at this moment President Trump is not interested in this. It has become too symbolic for him.

    The other option for compromise is that Europeans are going to keep Greenland, and we are going to make Trump the chair of the Nobel Prize Committee so he can give the next Nobel Prize to himself. But, as of now, I do believe that Europeans probably are going to target some American goods. And we will see about the Anti-Coercion Instrument going forward.

    You mentioned earlier that Europeans thought Trump really did care about building a coalition against China. But now it seems possible that one of the long-term effects of America potentially breaking with Europe in a major way would be to provide an opening for China.

    Totally. This is the story. And I also believe Europeans are still hanging on to the hope that some part of the American élite—the financial élite but also the military élite—is going to go to President Trump and say, “Listen, you dislike Europe. And, of course, Europeans are idiots as you told us, but they’re idiots that we need.” If you look at global public opinion, people believe China is rising, but what is more interesting is that they have stopped fearing this. And I do believe this is something that President Trump slightly underestimated.

    And then there is the question of NATO. Many Europeans have started to ask themselves the question of whether their belief in NATO has started to resemble the French belief in the famous Maginot Line. Before World War Two, the French created this “fortification” on the German-French border, which created the feeling that they were defended, and then it turned out that it was not the case. So, suddenly, this destabilization of Europe can really have far-reaching consequences. This is why some Europeans still believe that at a certain point there is going to be a strategic realization on the side of the Trump Administration that this is not a war worth fighting.

    I hope you’re right, but you said Trump may have “underestimated” what effect all this would have with regard to China’s potential influence going forward. I don’t think this was underestimated or overestimated. I don’t think it goes into the equation of what he’s thinking about. The concept of a misguided national interest is one thing. Lots of Presidents have had those. The concept of a person who has no conception of the national interest is maybe closer to the mark.

    No, you’re right. And do you know what the real risk for Europe is? The real risk for Europe is that Greenland will become Trump’s obsession. Because one of the important things about President Trump is that he has strong views, but he cannot keep his attention for a very long time on the same issue. And, if this basically becomes an obsession, then the nature of the change to the transatlantic relationship is going to be really, really dramatic. ♦

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    Isaac Chotiner

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  • The Biggest Threat to the 2026 Economy Is Still Donald Trump

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    The escalating trade war with China is currently on something of a hiatus. In October, the Trump Administration eased tensions by reversing its decision to expand the list of Chinese companies restricted from access to advanced U.S. technology. Earlier this month, Trump said he would allow Nvidia to export to China some high-grade computer chips, with the U.S. government collecting twenty-five per cent of the revenues. Wall Street seems to be tacitly assuming that the détente will last beyond Trump’s trip to China scheduled for April, but who really knows? If the government in Beijing doesn’t agree to the concessions that he wants, he could easily revert to a more coercive stance.

    Even if the economy can endure another year of the Tariff Man, there are other issues that could have a big political effect. They include jobs, prices, and health-care costs. Since April, growth in employment has averaged just forty thousand jobs a month. Last year, the figure was more than four times larger. Moreover, Powell said the Fed thinks the official monthly payroll figures are overestimating the actual numbers by about sixty thousand. If that’s right, the economy has been shedding twenty thousand jobs a month. Even going by the official figures, the number of people working in manufacturing, the sector which is supposed to be the primary beneficiary of Trump’s tariffs, has fallen by sixty-three thousand this year. Other industries that have recently displayed weak hiring are information and finance, which employ a lot of white-collar workers. This has provoked fears that A.I. is eliminating jobs. In a Reuters/Ipsos poll, seventy-one per cent of respondents said they were concerned that A.I. will be “putting too many people of out of work permanently.”

    Trump can’t be blamed for A.I., although the executive order that he issued two weeks ago in an effort to prevent states from regulating the potentially transformative new technology demonstrated how beholden he is to the Silicon Valley tech barons.

    He is more directly responsible for stubbornly high prices. His tariffs have helped raise the prices of many imported goods, including grocery staples such as coffee and bananas, and his mass deportations may be producing a labor shortage in some service industries, such as restaurants and hospitality, where there were almost a million job openings in the fall. When firms are struggling to find the workers they need, they have to offer higher wages, which raises their costs.

    As the midterms approach, Democrats will surely heed Barack Obama’s advice to focus on affordability, jobs, and health care. With Congress having adjourned without addressing the year-end expiry of enhanced subsidies for health-insurance policies purchased through Obamacare exchanges, some twenty-two million Americans will be affected. Going into 2026, many of them could face much higher premiums, more than double in some instances. With Republicans divided, and Trump still doing little more than publicly bashing Obamacare, there is no assurance of any resolution.

    Meanwhile, Trump’s presence in the White House is accentuating another big threat to the economy, which comes from financial fragility. Over the past three years, the S. & P. 500 has risen by more than seventy-five per cent, and the Nasdaq has more than doubled. Relative to earnings, stocks are trading at very high levels, historically speaking, and investors are borrowing record amounts of money to buy these stocks. On the basis of optimistic assumptions for revenues and profits, A.I.-related companies are raising enormous sums of money, in many cases from one another. And despite the revenues from Trump’s tariffs, the U.S. government is running a budget deficit of close to six per cent of G.D.P.

    Whether one categorizes this situation as a financial boom or a bubble is largely a matter of terminology. The key point is that the financial system is vulnerable to unexpected disruptions, and, as the Bank of England recently noted, the risks are rising. Conceivably, a shock could emerge from the A.I. complex, or from the private-credit sector—where hedge funds, private-equity firms, and other non-bank lenders have been expanding their lending very rapidly—or from Trump himself, as he moves to extend his power over the Fed, an institution whose independence many investors, here and abroad, regard as the primary guarantor of financial stability. Powell’s term as Fed chair ends in May, and Trump is set to announce a replacement early in the New Year. Kevin Hassett, who heads the National Economic Council at the White House, and frequently appears on television defending Trump’s policies, is the favorite to get the job—despite rumblings on Wall Street that he would be too much of a patsy.

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    John Cassidy

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