Trump's foreign policy critics are underestimating him once again

Yahoo

06-05-2025

For years, Americans drew a sharp line between foreign and domestic policy, with broad agreement on US aims abroad even when there was furious disagreement about how the country should be governed at home. True, there were partisan differences on strategies to contain the Soviet Union. But there was a fundamental political consensus on the need to fund the military, on the crucial importance of Nato, and on the US's wider geopolitical ambitions.
Those days are as dead, buried, and rotting as Stalin's corpse.
In today's America, foreign policy is firmly divided along partisan lines. Divisions between the parties are compounded by those within them. Democratic splits are deeper because the party has no leaders, agenda, or direction, aside from opposing Trump. Republican divisions are largely hidden because the president has reoriented his party's electoral base and can threaten the tenure of any opponent by backing his or her primary opponent.
He has already notched up a huge success in an area closely linked to foreign policy. Trump's stringent policies on illegal immigration have clearly worked, with the bonus that Democrats have lined up on the unpopular side of that issue (mostly to appeal to their Leftist base). Under the new administration, the numbers trying to cross the border illegally have fallen by more than 90 per cent.
With the border closed, Trump is ramping up a massive effort to deport those already living in the US illegally, beginning with violent gang members. Self-deportation numbers are likely to be rising, and the administration is doing everything it can to encourage them. It has just unveiled an innovative programme to give self-deportees a free flight home and a $1,000 bonus.
The biggest beneficiaries, ironically, will be the Deep Blue cities and states whose budgets have been crushed by the influx of illegals.
Trump's trade policy has, meanwhile, not been the total disaster his critics like to claim. The White House is filled with contending voices, but a point man has now clearly emerged. It's Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, who has shown himself to be calm, mature, and to understand markets and especially the signals they give as the administration negotiates trade deals. The key to calming those markets, as both Bessent and Trump know, will be to quickly conclude several major 'framework' bargains with large trading partners. Those will then become templates for still more deals.
Scott Bessent has shown himself to be calm, mature, and to understand markets amid Donald Trump's trade negotiations - Al Drago/Bloomberg
The outlier is China. Both Republicans and Democrats see the Communist regime as America's most dangerous enemy, an assessment that points toward a 'strategic decoupling,' which means far less American reliance on cheap goods from China. That decoupling will take time – supply chains have to be relocated, factories have to be built. But it is already happening. Apple, for instance, is already reported to be shifting iPhone production for the American market from China to India.
This shift by foreign manufacturers, together with Trump's barriers to China's domestic exporters, presents a huge, long-term problem for Beijing, which has built its economy around exports, not domestic consumption. With exports flagging, China has tried to spark consumption with profligate government spending, fuelling a temporary boom in housing and infrastructure – and now a catastrophic bust. It will also try to redirect exports to Europe, which will block them, and move them secretly through third countries, which the US will detect and sanction.
Trump, who understands China's economic vulnerability, has ratcheted up the pressure with prohibitively high tariffs. He has built a Great Trade Wall against China. Beijing has reciprocated with tariffs on American imports, but those are far less effective than Trump's tariffs because China has been limiting imports for decades.
Trump's high tariffs hardly resolve the trade question, with China or any other partner, since it is unclear if he is using them primarily to get better deals (more trade), or to drive manufacturers back home (less trade, more tariff revenue). Trump's ambiguity on the goal may well reflect his own ambivalence. But it is also a powerful negotiating tactic.
China's main leverage is not high trade barriers – it already had them – but its control over much of the world's supply of vital rare earth minerals. China would have another edge in negotiating with a democracy if Xi's position were secure and the CCP's control were unassailable. Normally, dictators can outlast democracies in these 'wars of attrition'. This time, however, Xi's leadership appears vulnerable and party leaders are worried about unrest, thanks to rising unemployment.
Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in 2019 - BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP
In fact, Xi is trapped. If he backs down to America, he looks weak. If he stands up strong, he risks economic collapse and political uprisings. So far, he's been strong, but has quietly lowered barriers on selected goods that China needs.
This economic standoff between the world's two largest economies leaves three big, unresolved questions. Who can hold out the longest in a trade war? Is Xi's rule and even the CCP's control jeopardised if the economic downturn is sharp and prolonged? What does Trump really want from the trade talks? Does he want freer, fairer trade or does he want to decouple slowly from an avowed enemy? The answer is likely the latter, without incurring too much damage to the US economy.
On Ukraine, meanwhile, Trump's strategy also seems to be evolving, this time in response to Russian intransigence.
Continued military aid for Ukraine without US boots on the ground would have been an easy, bipartisan call in an earlier day. No more, especially among Republicans, who are tired of long and costly wars and remember Trump's campaign promise to end those military engagements.
Trump's position was reflected in America's effort to mediate a ceasefire between Kyiv and Moscow. The US proffered a one-sided deal, giving Russia everything it occupied, including Crimea. Oddly enough, Ukraine didn't like it. Since Kyiv would be making all the concessions, that's who the US strong-armed.
Incredibly, though, it was Putin who turned down the deal. He wants even more Ukrainian territory and has repeatedly said he wishes to extinguish the country as a sovereign nation. He's believed to be running low on tanks and soldiers, but he clearly thinks he can outlast President Zelensky and win it all.
Moreover, it seems to be becoming clear to Trump that any deal with Putin is unreliable. He may promise a ceasefire but the Kremlin keeps lobbing missiles into civilian apartments. Trump has begun expressing frustration with the Russians.
The implication is that the only way Putin will yield is under intense military pressure. That means a concerted effort by the US and its Nato partners to supply arms, ammunition, and intelligence to Ukraine and help fund their indigenous efforts to build drones and missiles.
Supporting that effort would be politically difficult for Trump, given his campaign promises. But abandoning Ukraine would likely be even more costly, politically and diplomatically, especially if it led to Russian victory.
Iran presents even harder choices, though the ultimate goal is clear. Both the Trump administration and Israel's government have repeatedly said that Iran cannot have nuclear weapons. Indeed, all senior Israel politicians agree on that point.
They also want to eliminate the missiles to deliver the weapons. To satisfy those goals, a deal with Iran would require the mullahs to: declare all their nuclear enrichment and research facilities; eliminate all those facilities; eliminate Iran's missile arsenal; and submit to on-going verification of all these steps, including snap inspections by a reliable third-party.
Iran, predictably, is trying to run out the clock on negotiations as it builds the weapons. Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu surely understand that, though it's unclear if Trump's principal negotiator, Steve Witkoff, does.
But Trump is already increasing the pressure on Iran. He has reversed Biden's policy of economic appeasement. With this gusher of billions, Tehran funded proxy terror groups around the region, worked on its weapons programme, and paid off groups within Iran. Other than that, Biden's policy was a glorious success.
Trump has not only snapped back the sanctions, he will apply them to third parties who buy Iranian oil. That means China. Unfortunately, this financial stranglehold will take time to work, and the world doesn't have that time if it is to prevent Iran from going nuclear.
Israel is apparently willing to attack Iranian nuclear sites on its own, even though it is thought to lack aircraft to carry the heaviest 'bunker-buster' bombs needed to penetrate Iran's underground enrichment facilities. Only the US has those mammoth planes. Anonymous reports are that Netanyahu was told 'no' by the White House, which wants to give negotiations a chance. The question is what the US and Israel will do if those negotiations fail.
The impasse with Iran leaves Trump with three big decisions. How long can he wait – wait for the economic sanctions to cripple Iran, wait for regime opponents to rise up within the country, and wait for the mullahs to finally relinquish the nuclear programme they have pursued for decades? How long is Trump willing to restrain the Israelis, especially if US intelligence says the nuclear risks are growing ever worse? And, finally, will the US use its aircraft as part of any Israeli-led military effort?
Trump faces a series of hard questions with no easy answers. But even if he gets these big challenges right, his domestic critics are unlikely to give him any credit.
Charles Lipson is the Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the University of Chicago. His latest book is 'Free Speech 101: A Practical Guide for Students'. He can be reached at [e-mail]
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