US President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met in Washington on Tuesday for a telling encounter at which the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was discussed, a bone of contention between Trump and Mexico, but not so with Canada. Trump regards Mexico as the chief beneficiary of NAFTA, but he is prepared to tweak trade with America's northern neighbour that shares a 5,000-mile border with the US. “We will be tweaking it, ” Trump told a news conference in a reference to NAFTA. “It's a much less severe situation than what has taken place on the southern border,” he said, alluding to Mexico.
Trump's talk of NAFTA highlights the predominance of economic issues in his foreign policy and his lack of interest in non-economic affairs such as human rights, gender and race issues. According to Trump, America faces economic stagnation, and its sluggish growth is coupled with challenges that relate to the global order. The information revolution is yet another factor, for no US president in the past has tweeted as much as Trump has done.
Nevertheless, the liberal establishment in Washington remains largely focussed on human rights, gender and race issues, even if the conservative establishment has been concerned with economics and trade. Last year, total trade in goods and services between the US and Canada amounted to more than $660 billion, and there was a US merchandise trade deficit of some $11 billion, one of America's smallest deficits with any trading partner.
In sharp contrast, America's trade with China, roughly the same total value as that with Canada, left the US with a trade deficit of $366 billion, and this has only highlighted Asia's uncertainty about possible US intentions towards protectionism under Trump.
Trump also advocates the “extreme vetting” of refugees and asylum-seekers from abroad, even a total ban on America's receiving nationals from seven mainly Muslim nations. He has suggested that he will adjust the ban to give priority to Christians and other religious minorities from these nations.
Behind the scenes, there are hidden dynamics in the relationship between Canada and the US and between Trump and Trudeau. At 70, Trump is the oldest president in American history, and Trudeau, at 43, is the youngest Canadian prime minister. Trump's rallying cry is “America first. Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo.” In contrast, Trudeau's motto is “we're Canadian. And we're here to help.”
Canada tends towards libertarianism, whereas Trump is a believer in imperialist ideologies. Unsurprisingly, the initial and most compelling issue he exploited on becoming US president was immigration, both Mexican and Muslim. In his meeting with Trudeau, he was also oddly funereal, lamenting America's demise. “Sadly, the American dream is dead,” he said, in contrast to Trudeau's bouncy “sunny ways, my friends, sunny ways.”
“The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive,” Trump said, in what appeared to be another barb at Asia. In his meeting with Trump last week, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe tried to bridge the gap between the old and the up-and-coming by offering a lavish gift to woo America in the shape of a plan to create 700,000 jobs.
Much of the money will come from the $1.2 trillion Japanese public-pension fund, which is the world's largest.
During a recent visit to Tokyo James Mattis, America's new defence secretary, labelled Japan “a model of cost-sharing” and gave the clearest pledge yet that the US commitment to defend Japan includes the disputed Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea (called Diaoyu in China), which Japan administers but China claims.
As far as Trump is concerned, China not Japan, is the challenge. Meanwhile, the challenge for Japan is to make sure the road to a better future is not so rocky that it causes catastrophe along the way. Abe's Japan, unlike Trump's America, is against disruption or creative destruction. The Japanese prime minister is wary of the convergence of conservatism and protectionism that could create a fertile breeding ground for xenophobic populism.
Abe also sought to curry favour with Trump by playing golf with the American president at Mar-a-Lago, his private resort in Florida. He may have been drawing inspiration from his grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, who as Japanese prime minister in 1957 played golf with the then US president Dwight Eisenhower in order to help cement relations between the two nations.
Japan is now considered the US's chief ally in Asia, so golf diplomacy obviously bears fruit. Abe received the red carpet treatment in both Washington and Florida and was given a VIP tour of the White House. Trump makes sure that his bodily gestures towards his visitors reflect US hegemony in the international arena, and his handshakes are especially revealing. He has a habit of clenching his guests' hands, refusing to let them go until sufficient photographs have been taken by the waiting cameras.
He tried to do an iron-handed alpha rip-his-arm-off handshake with Trudeau, but the latter shrewdly did an alpha shoulder-grab before Trump could clasp his hand in his iron grip.
Gesticulation aside, Abe did not rebuke Trump about the American president's rejection of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a giant multilateral trade agreement that Trump summarily halted as soon as he assumed office.
Trump not only dismisses the peoples of the Third World, whether Muslim or Mexican, but he also sometimes treats American allies with brusque authority. He hung up in an apparent tantrum when speaking to Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, a signatory of the TPP, who had agreed with former US president Barack Obama to sign a deal to repatriate refugees stranded on tiny Pacific islands to resettle in the US. Abe warms up to Trump's iron-fisted handshake Trump seems willing to sign off on Crimea and Ukraine, for he has expressed his admiration for his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. Iran and its client states in the Middle East appear to be a main target, and former national security adviser Michael Flynn has officially placed Iran on a list with North Korea as a country that has been put on notice. Flynn tendered his resignation on Monday over his links to Russia following revelations on the contents of his telephone conversations with Russian Ambassador to Washington Sergey Kislyev.
“In the course of my duties as the incoming national security adviser, I held numerous phone calls with foreign counterparts, ministers and ambassadors. These calls were to facilitate a smooth transition and begin to build the necessary relationships between the president, his advisers and foreign leaders. Such calls are standard practice in any transition of this magnitude,” Flynn explained in his letter of resignation.
“Unfortunately, because of the fast pace of events, I inadvertently briefed the vice-president-elect and others with incomplete information regarding my phone calls with the Russian ambassador,” he added.
The Iraqi parliament has discussed banning American contractors working in the country in response to Trump's ban on Iraqi citizens travelling to the US. Trudeau came to the rescue this week, offering to receive the refugees America refuses. The backlash of Iran and its predominantly Shia Muslim allies in the Middle East will also seek to promote carefully orchestrated global anti-Americanism.
In Europe, too, leaders are skittish about the new US president. German chancellor Angela Merkel has reminded Trump that his travel ban could violate the Geneva Conventions on refugees. For the time being “Planet Trump” may still be an implausible dream.
