18 The EconomistJune 9th 2018
1C
ANADA is a fairly laid-back place. On
the morning of May 25th, a Friday, Jus-
tin Trudeau, the prime minister, looked re-
laxed, dressed in jeans, having walked to
his office opposite the parliament building
in Ottawa. Mr Trudeau talked to The Econo-
mistabout the trade negotiations with the
United States, explaining that his job was
to stand up for Canadian interests, that
President Donald Trump understood this,
and that the two had “a very good working
relationship”.
But Canada is also a place that depends
on the United States for two-thirds of its
trade. There was nothing relaxed about Mr
Trudeau’s response when, a few days later,
Mr Trump slapped tariffs on steel and alu-
minium from Canada, Europe and Mexico,
ostensibly for reasons of national security.
Mr Trudeau said the idea that Canada was
somehow a national-security threat to the
United States was “quite frankly insulting
and unacceptable”. France’s president, Em-
manuel Macron, called the tariffs “illegal”
and warned: “Economic nationalism leads
to war. That is exactly what happened in
the 1930s.” When Canada hosts the G
summit in Charlevoix, Quebec on June
8th-9th, it risks looking like the G6+1.
Mr Trump came to power arguing that
the world was a mess and American for-eign policy an abject failure. His “America
First” view was that it was no longer Amer-
ica’s job to clean up that mess, but to pur-
sue its own interests. It was time for Ameri-
ca’s enemies to fear it, for its allies to pay
their fair share and for the country to be
more selfish in pursuing what it wanted.
The American foreign-policy establish-
ment he turned his back on returned the
compliment, and was dismayed by his
election victory. Some among its number
nevertheless harboured hopes that having
campaigned in bile, the president would
govern in beige, constrained by the reali-
ties of office, “grown-ups” in his team and
the persuasion of his allies.
It didn’t happen. Just over 500 days into
his presidency, Mr Trump is up to his ears
in foreign-policy controversy and showing
no signs of being constrained. He has ap-
pointed his second secretary of state, the
hawkish Mike Pompeo, and his third na-
tional security adviser, the ultra-hawkish
John Bolton. In the past three months, in
addition to imposing tariffs on his allies, he
has abrogated the nuclear deal with Iran,
set the stage for a trade war with China and
offered Kim Jong Un of North Korea a sum-
mit, which is due to take place in Singapore
on June 12th.
Trade experts, policy veterans and dip-lomats from almostall America’s allies
have looked on aghast. Mr Trump’s voters
are thrilled. In foreign policy, perhaps
more than anywhere else, he is doing ex-
actly what he said he would do: pulling out
of the Paris climate agreementand the Iran
deal, moving America’s embassy in Israel
to Jerusalem, getting tough with China.
Many in business are more or less on
board, too; happy with growth at home,
they give the president the benefit of the
doubt overseas—and when it comes to Chi-
na-bashing, plenty of them are all for it.
Some allied governments, notably those
of Israel and Saudi Arabia, are delighted.
There are three perspectives from
which to look at this. The most prevalent in
the foreign-policy establishment and the
chancelleries of Europe is despair. The
rules-based order ushered in after the sec-
ond world war, which provided both the
greatest-ever increase in human wealth
and global trade and a whole human life-
time without worldwide armed conflict, is
being dismantled. No good will come of it.
The second perspective could be called
“Yes, but”. Yes-but-ism doesn’t exactly re-
ject despair, but tempers it with various ca-
veats: that Mr Trump’s outrages may not be
as profound, unprecedented and perma-
nent as they might seem; and that the old
rules-based order was already failing in a
number of respects.
The third perspective is openness to
surprising success. This holds that Mr
Trump’s one-off mixture of ambitions and
style means he might be able to achieve
things that people working in old ways
within the old system simply could not.
These are perspectives, not camps.Present at the destruction
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America’s president is undermining the rules-based international order. Can any
good come of it?BriefingDonald Trump and the world