Ted Campbell provides a thumbnail sketch of Donald Trump and suggests why the Canadian establishment finds him so hard to understand (and to work with):
In the view of Professors Bradbury and Leuprecht Canada and all of the US’ competitors are falling into Trump’s trap and the WTO ~ and global fair trade ~ will be the chief victim because, from President Trump’s perspective it is better that we all sink into poverty as long as the US remains top dog.
OK, what do we actually know about Donald Trump? What drives his policy choices?
I’m going to engage in a bit of ‘pop psychology’ and very personal speculation to try to clarify my own thoughts about President Trump as he prepares to meet, in just a few hours, with the G7 in Canada.
Is he stupid? No, not really … perhaps not “well read” as, say, most presidents from George Washington and Thomas Jefferson through to George H.W. Bush and Barack Obama were, but he’s not a stupid man. Is he intellectually lazy? I believe so … I think that explains why he is reported to dislike sitting through briefings and so on; he seems to want to follow his own instincts and cut through all the details, especially those which might not support his instinctive preferred course of action.
Is he a racist? The available evidence says “No,” he’s not. Is he Islamophobic? Not likely, I think. Is he a white supremacist? Not that, either, in my view, but it may be closer to his ‘basic instincts.’ He is, I suspect, something a kin to the Nativists who sprung up in mid 19th century America. He is, I believe, suspicious of everyone who is not a born and bred American. It not a racist or religious thing, it is simple nationalism of a rather narrow and nasty sort.
I think he is also, or wishes to be, an isolationist; I suspect he actively detests the World Trade Organization, the United Nations, the World Court, the International Monetary Fund, the Organization of American States, NATO and, possibly, even bilateral even NORAD because he sees each as an attempt by foreigners to entangle America and tie its hands. He is said to be less opposed to bilateral deals in which the US is, inevitably, the major partner but dislikes multi-lateral deals wherein American can be outnumbered and outvoted by others. he seems not to care who the “others” are … foreigners are foreigners, none are friends.
He is, as I have said before, an instinctive man; he makes up his mind quickly ~ although he may change it, by a full 180°, in hours or days ~ based on the evidence he wants to hear and believe, and I suspect that his instinctive reaction to the world is the America is like a modern day, national Gulliver, marooned in a hostile, greedy world and tied down by agreements and treaties and institutions created by little people …
… and then forced to abide by the little peoples’ rules.
[…]
His view of “winning,” it seems to me, owes more to Conan the Barbarian than to Adam Smith or Andrew Carnegie. Thus, I think Time has it about right … he wants to be an absolute monarch.
In fact, I think he shares Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “admiration” for China’s “basic dictatorship, which “allows them to turn their economy around on a dime.” Since I don’t think he, Trump, or Trudeau for that matter, knows much about economics I can only conclude that he admires Xi Jinping’s ability to exercise dictatorial power and throw his perceived enemies in jail on a whim.
That, I suspect, is President Trump’s “basic instinct:” he wants to be the absolute monarch of whatever enterprise with which he happens to be involved ~ property development, repeated bankruptcy proceedings, reality TV shows and now the US presidency. I’m guessing that we might have Donald Trump in the White House until 2020 … his view of America in the world, as Gulliver, is shared by many millions of his fellow citizens and the US Democrats seem, at best, incoherent in policy terms.
