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Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Opinion - Economic populism from both parties fails working Americans
President Trump's startling win in 2016 ushered in a new era of economic populism. Ever since, both parties have been vying to offer a new economic deal to blue-collar Americans, whose earning power had been declining for decades. They could use a new deal. According to the Federal Reserve, real median earnings for non-college workers fell 14 percent over the past 40 years, while those for workers with a bachelor's degree or higher have grown by 14 percent. Opportunity in America looks very different to people on opposite sides of the diploma divide. Whereas non-college workers contend with downward mobility, the highly educated rise into tonier precincts of upper-middle-class affluence. This disparity disfigures our society, and populists across the political spectrum are right to want to redress it. Unfortunately, they have proved better at posturing as working-class tribunes than at tangibly improving their lives. President Biden presided over a nearly $5 trillion public spending binge aimed at rebuilding a pandemic-stricken U.S. economy 'from the bottom up and middle out.' But Bidenomics ultimately struck out with working families, who identified it with rising living costs and eroding purchasing power. Although he owes his reelection mainly to inflation, it didn't take Trump long to break his promise to focus on batting it down. Instead, he's launched a global trade war that's driving prices back up for consumers and businesses, choking economic growth and provoking retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports. An angry Trump lashed out at Walmart last week for announcing price increases, instructing the retail giant to 'eat the tariffs.' That's not an option for thousands of smaller businesses operating on slim profit margins. After four years of steady growth, the U.S. economy has shrunk 0.3 percent since Trump's return to the White House. Like Bidenomics before it, MAGA populism is failing working Americans. Both are based on dubious premises about what's gone wrong and how to fix it. Populists blame trade agreements and globalization for decimating factory jobs. This ignores structural changes that have affected all advanced economies — rising education levels, more women working, growing demand for services, the digital revolution. It also vastly overstates the power of policy to either cause or reverse deindustrialization. Trump is taxing most imports to shield U.S. companies from foreign competition and induce them to bring manufacturing jobs home. Yet America already has nearly half a million unfilled factory jobs. The share of U.S. workers in manufacturing has been falling steadily since 1950, to just eight percent today. Is it worth risking a new bout of inflation and possibly a recession to bump that number up a few points? Americans aren't buying Trump's prescription for a 'new golden age' built upon protectionism and autarchy. The Chicago Council on Global Affairs reports that 84 percent of Americans say trade is good for their standard of living and good for the U.S. economy (79 percent). Strikingly, 55 percent — including nearly half of Republicans — want Washington to pursue a global free trade policy, up from 34 percent in 2024. No wonder Trump is crawfishing away from his 'beautiful' tariffs and trying to cut new trade deals with Great Britain and China. Yet even as his right-wing economic populism implodes, progressives continue to clamor for a left-wing version. They see it as the antidote to 'neoliberalism,' which they define as a fixation with free markets, free trade, global economic integration and fiscal austerity that supposedly gripped both parties over the last four decades. The populist left demands a 'post-neoliberal' agenda — conveniently forgetting that in Bidenomics, it already got one. In his first major decision, Biden sided with progressive economists pushing for a massive $1.9 trillion stimulus bill. They dismissed warnings that a big dose of deficit spending would ignite inflation. Biden also put trade policy in the deep freeze, left some Trump tariffs in place and embraced industrial policies to 'reshore' factories and supply chains, nurture domestic chip manufacturing and invest billions in electric cars and clean energy production. The White House hired a left-wing academic to launch an unsuccessful bid to break up America's most successful tech companies. And Biden made good on his promise to be the most pro-union president ever, intervening on labor's behalf in organizing drives and even walking a picket line with striking workers. While Biden can take credit for new investments in chip fabs and clean energy production, much of his spending on education and infrastructure, including on rural broadband, has yet to yield positive results. From January 2023 to January 2025, manufacturing jobs dropped. And while union membership under Biden saw a modest uptick (240,000 workers), the share of unionized workers fell below 10 percent as the workforce grew. Bidenomics won raves from progressives but Bronx cheers from working-class voters. They linked heavy government spending to high prices and resented what they saw as Democrats' inattention to their economic struggles. As The Atlantic's Jonathan Chait concluded in a Bidenomics post-mortem, 'The notion that there is a populist economic formula to reversing the rightward drift of the working class has been tried, and, as clearly as these things can be proved by real-world experimentation, it has failed.' Non-college Americans aren't asking for statist 'solutions' — protectionism, unrestrained deficit spending and industrial policies larded with superfluous social policy mandates — that flout basic economics and common sense. Populism, as practiced by Biden and Trump, has foundered on the patronizing premise that working families want yesterday's factory jobs back. But they know the economy has changed and want to be part of where it's going, not where it has been. Will Marshall is president and founder of the Progressive Policy Institute. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
23-05-2025
- Business
- The Hill
Economic populism from both parties fails working Americans
President Trump's startling win in 2016 ushered in a new era of economic populism. Ever since, both parties have been vying to offer a new economic deal to blue-collar Americans, whose earning power had been declining for decades. They could use a new deal. According to the Federal Reserve, real median earnings for non-college workers fell 14 percent over the past 40 years, while those for workers with a bachelor's degree or higher have grown by 14 percent. Opportunity in America looks very different to people on opposite sides of the diploma divide. Whereas non-college workers contend with downward mobility, the highly educated rise into tonier precincts of upper-middle-class affluence. This disparity disfigures our society, and populists across the political spectrum are right to want to redress it. Unfortunately, they have proved better at posturing as working-class tribunes than at tangibly improving their lives. President Biden presided over a nearly $5 trillion public spending binge aimed at rebuilding a pandemic-stricken U.S. economy 'from the bottom up and middle out.' But Bidenomics ultimately struck out with working families, who identified it with rising living costs and eroding purchasing power. Although he owes his reelection mainly to inflation, it didn't take Trump long to break his promise to focus on batting it down. Instead, he's launched a global trade war that's driving prices back up for consumers and businesses, choking economic growth and provoking retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports. An angry Trump lashed out at Walmart last week for announcing price increases, instructing the retail giant to 'eat the tariffs.' That's not an option for thousands of smaller businesses operating on slim profit margins. After four years of steady growth, the U.S. economy has shrunk 0.3 percent since Trump's return to the White House. Like Bidenomics before it, MAGA populism is failing working Americans. Both are based on dubious premises about what's gone wrong and how to fix it. Populists blame trade agreements and globalization for decimating factory jobs. This ignores structural changes that have affected all advanced economies — rising education levels, more women working, growing demand for services, the digital revolution. It also vastly overstates the power of policy to either cause or reverse deindustrialization. Trump is taxing most imports to shield U.S. companies from foreign competition and induce them to bring manufacturing jobs home. Yet America already has nearly half a million unfilled factory jobs. The share of U.S. workers in manufacturing has been falling steadily since 1950, to just eight percent today. Is it worth risking a new bout of inflation and possibly a recession to bump that number up a few points? Americans aren't buying Trump's prescription for a 'new golden age' built upon protectionism and autarchy. The Chicago Council on Global Affairs reports that 84 percent of Americans say trade is good for their standard of living and good for the U.S. economy (79 percent). Strikingly, 55 percent — including nearly half of Republicans — want Washington to pursue a global free trade policy, up from 34 percent in 2024. No wonder Trump is crawfishing away from his 'beautiful' tariffs and trying to cut new trade deals with Great Britain and China. Yet even as his right-wing economic populism implodes, progressives continue to clamor for a left-wing version. They see it as the antidote to 'neoliberalism,' which they define as a fixation with free markets, free trade, global economic integration and fiscal austerity that supposedly gripped both parties over the last four decades. The populist left demands a 'post-neoliberal' agenda — conveniently forgetting that in Bidenomics, it already got one. In his first major decision, Biden sided with progressive economists pushing for a massive $1.9 trillion stimulus bill. They dismissed warnings that a big dose of deficit spending would ignite inflation. Biden also put trade policy in the deep freeze, left some Trump tariffs in place and embraced industrial policies to 'reshore' factories and supply chains, nurture domestic chip manufacturing and invest billions in electric cars and clean energy production. The White House hired a left-wing academic to launch an unsuccessful bid to break up America's most successful tech companies. And Biden made good on his promise to be the most pro-union president ever, intervening on labor's behalf in organizing drives and even walking a picket line with striking workers. While Biden can take credit for new investments in chip fabs and clean energy production, much of his spending on education and infrastructure, including on rural broadband, has yet to yield positive results. From January 2023 to January 2025, manufacturing jobs dropped. And while union membership under Biden saw a modest uptick (240,000 workers), the share of unionized workers fell below 10 percent as the workforce grew. Bidenomics won raves from progressives but Bronx cheers from working-class voters. They linked heavy government spending to high prices and resented what they saw as Democrats' inattention to their economic struggles. As The Atlantic's Jonathan Chait concluded in a Bidenomics post-mortem, 'The notion that there is a populist economic formula to reversing the rightward drift of the working class has been tried, and, as clearly as these things can be proved by real-world experimentation, it has failed.' Non-college Americans aren't asking for statist 'solutions' — protectionism, unrestrained deficit spending and industrial policies larded with superfluous social policy mandates — that flout basic economics and common sense. Populism, as practiced by Biden and Trump, has foundered on the patronizing premise that working families want yesterday's factory jobs back. But they know the economy has changed and want to be part of where it's going, not where it has been. Will Marshall is president and founder of the Progressive Policy Institute.
Washington Post
05-05-2025
- Business
- Washington Post
Trump is making foreign liberals, free trade and immigrants great again
For the second time in a matter of days, President Donald Trump's bull-in-a-China-shop routine on the world stage appears to have spurred liberals to a big comeback win in a key ally's elections. First came Canada, where liberals surged thanks to an anti-Trump, anti-tariff and anti- '51st state' backlash — one that had the conservative leader squirming to distance himself from Trump. Then this past weekend came Australia, where liberals also overturned a significant deficit from earlier this year and won in a landslide. In short, it seems Trump is making foreign liberals great again. But we can say that about other things, too, including domestic affairs. On several key issues, Trump's brazen second-term actions appear to be pushing Americans in the opposite direction of his early agenda just like he did the electorates of Canada and Australia. These include free trade, immigration, Ukraine and checks and balances. We saw this kind of 'thermostatic' effect in Trump's first term — especially when it came to sympathy for the immigrants that Trump has often demonized. But not like this. Free trade is a case in point. New data from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs set to be released publicly Monday shows a sudden surge in support for global free trade, even as Trump has sought to rein it in through his global tariffs. The poll gave people three options, two of which were to 'pursue a policy of global free trade' and to 'reduce international trade and seek greater self-sufficiency.' The latter is in line with Trump's tariff's approach. But Americans suddenly prefer the former approach — by a lot. While just last year they preferred to reduce international trade by six points, they now prefer global free trade by 26 points. Support for global free trade has shot up from 35 percent in June 2024 to 55 percent today. Even Republicans have trended somewhat toward free trade (34 percent). (A 51 percent majority, though, remain in favor of reduced trade.) The poll also showed the percentages of people who said international trade was good for creating jobs (70 percent) and their own standards of living (84 percent) hitting new highs not seen since at least 2004. This isn't the only poll to suggest a sudden embrace of free trade amid Trump's tariff war. Recent data published by the Financial Times shows a similar surge in 'strong' support for free trade — a surge that clearly coincides with Trump's election and inauguration. And Gallup data last month showed the percentage of those who described international trade as an 'opportunity for economic growth' rather than a 'threat' increasing by about 20 points from last year. The 81 percent who viewed international trade as a positive was the highest since at least the early 1990s. As for the other issues? Pro-immigrant sentiment appears to be returning, as Trump wages a deportation campaign that has repeatedly been halted by the courts. Economist-YouGov polling throughout the 2024 campaign showed more Americans said immigrants made us 'worse off' than 'better off.' They now prefer 'better off' by double digits, 40-29. And the shift happened almost immediately after Trump was inaugurated. (It's not totally clear this is all about Trump effect. For instance, illegal border crossings had plunged in 2024 and have continued to do so early in Trump's presidency. So perhaps people just aren't as concerned about illegal immigration. And Trump has won high marks from the public on the issue of border security. But polls have also shown Americans strongly disagree with some of Trump's deportation policies and view them as too harsh.) It also seems to be happening with support for Ukraine. Trump has long declined to forcefully back Ukraine over Russia. And with his administration pressuring Ukraine to make major concessions to end the war, Gallup showed the percentage of Americans who said we're doing 'not enough' to support Ukraine rising from 30 percent in December to 46 percent in March. That 46 percent 'not enough' figure was the highest it has been at any point in the war. And finally is a sudden apparent surge in support for checks and balances. Trump has attempted a series of extraordinary power grabs aimed at increasing his authority. He has largely sidelined the Republican-controlled Congress and attacked the courts that have stood in his way — including Republican-appointed judges. But as that's happened, Americans have suddenly expressed a desire for a more reined-in president. In March 2024, just 32 percent of Americans in AP-NORC polling said the president had too much power in U.S. government today. That number has shot up 22 points, to 54 percent. Meanwhile, the percentages who said Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court had too much power have both dropped by double-digits. So much of what Trump has done early in his tenure has been unpopular — often even more unpopular than he is. And it's apparently not just the policies; it's also the general tenor of his actions. Canadians and Australians seemed to want different approaches, and in many ways Americans do too.
Yahoo
29-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump vowed to end wars, equalize trade. He's delivered something else.
In just over three months, Donald Trump has threatened to annex sovereign territories, hedged on his commitment to America's oldest alliances and slapped tariffs on much of the world — unilaterally ushering in a new and uncertain global order. But at the 100-day mark of his second term, the 'Art of the Deal' author has yet to deliver the big pacts he promised. 'The president's foreign policy orientation is both popular and makes sense: end wars, secure the border and fair trade. That's how he got elected,' said Ian Bremmer, the president of the Eurasia Group, a nonpartisan risk-assessment firm in New York. 'But he is trying to do everything at once and his implementation has been disastrous so far. That's a big piece of why his approval ratings have shot down.' Peace in the Middle East. And in Ukraine. New trade deals around the globe. Trump's campaign bluster suggesting that all these things would be easy underscored his hyperbole and an impatience that has run smack into reality since he retook the White House. But it's not for lack of trying. Returning to the office with four years of presidential experience, Trump has attempted to drive an even more maximalist agenda, striving to fulfill his most ambitious promises, employing power politics to extract concessions from allies and adversaries alike. 'Because the guard rails were gone, because there was no one to guide him or steer him in the way that was in the first term, he came out of the blocks acting upon the perspective that he's had about the world for the last 40 years. He went out and implemented it,' said Ivo Daalder, the president of the nonpartisan Chicago Council on Global Affairs. 'In the process, he's destroyed the most important commodity the United States has had for the last 80 years, which is trust. Allies thought our values and interests mostly coincided and all of that's gone.' Just as the White House is trying to capitalize on the 100-day marker, the Trump administration is facing new evidence of its failures on more traditional foreign policy fronts. Russia on Monday rejected Trump's proposal to end the war in Ukraine, something he promised to do 'on day one." Hours later, Canadian voters clapped back at Trump with a resounding message, responding to his bullying about becoming America's '51 state' by electing Liberal leader Mark Carney as prime minister. That completed a stunning and ironic inversion of a campaign that, before it had become a national referendum on Trump, a more Trump-aligned conservative appeared likely to win. But the White House is unbothered by Trump's sinking approval numbers and confident that, before too long, trade deals will materialize and other diplomatic endeavors will start to bear fruit. 'With disruption, there's some volatility, but the long term strategy is solid and will reap benefits,' said National Security Council spokesperson Brian Hughes. 'There's a lot of work to do. President Trump is doing it fast, but it all is on a single thread, which is an America First foreign policy.' Long suspicious of America's values-based alliances with democratic allies, Trump has been explicit about his transactional approach to the world, offering to reward countries that want to invest in the U.S. and punishing everyone else. He has unnerved allies in Ottawa and Copenhagen with an imperialism that harkens back to the McKinley era, while at the same time pursuing a legacy as a historic peacemaker. Trump has empowered the businessman Steve Witkoff, officially his Middle East envoy, to simultaneously lead talks in the Middle East, with Iran and Russia. Meanwhile, he has launched a bombing campaign against the Iran-backed Houthis to reopen shipping lanes in the Red Sea, cracked down on border crossings — the White House on Monday highlighted the dramatic drop in apprehensions as one of its biggest early successes — and launched a global trade war that may eventually result in a slew of trade deals but, thus far, has mainly caused economic uncertainty. The White House pointed to other accomplishments: getting Mexico and Canada to strengthen border security; convincing Panama to end its involvement with China's Belt and Road Initiative; securing the release of 46 Americans detained overseas; persuading countries to accept repatriation flights of noncitizens who'd been in the U.S. illegally; and securing more than a trillion dollars in commitments from foreign investors. And two Trump allies outside the White House said there is a unifying principle behind Trump's newfound focus on a sovereign wealth fund, his trade war and even the serious interest in acquiring Greenland and Canada: lessening America's dependence on China by reshoring manufacturing and finding new sources for critical minerals. Hughes, the NSC spokesperson, continued: 'There's no greater force for peace and stability in this world than a strong America at home,' Trump's overarching strategic aim, he said, is 'protecting the Western hemisphere' and engaging in the world, be it in Europe, Asia or the Middle East, 'from the position of strength that [he] creates.' A number of foreign leaders have visited the White House, aiming to put Trump at ease with compliments and concessions. None were as deferential as El Salvador's Nayib Bukele, who joined the president and aides in explaining why it wouldn't be possible to obey an order from the Supreme Court to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a wrongly deported and imprisoned Salvadoran native whom the administration has accused of being a MS-13 gang member. But many of Trump's other efforts to impose his diplomatic will have been ignored by several adversaries, as well as a number of allies. Hamas continues to hold some Israeli hostages more than a month after Trump's threat that there'd be 'HELL TO PAY' if they didn't immediately free everyone. And the proposal to forcibly relocate Palestinians out of Gaza and rebuild it into a 'riviera,' a huge story during the administration's first weeks, has gone unmentioned more recently as allies in the region have been loath to accept resettled Palestinians in Gaza and Trump has turned his focus to the war in Ukraine. Witkoff has courted Vladimir Putin during multiple trips to Russia. For months now, Trump has repeated numerous Kremlin talking points while pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into peace talks. Asked last week what concessions he was demanding of Moscow, Trump said: 'Stopping the war, stopping taking the whole country, pretty big concession.' That comment — overstating the strength of Russia's position on the battlefield, where three years of fighting have yielded modest territorial gains — further clarified Trump's eagerness to end the war. 'The Trump administration wants to get a peace deal and they don't really care what the content of that peace deal is,' said Jeremy Shapiro, research director at the nonpartisan European Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. 'Russia would be idiots not to do it. They will get 90 percent of what they want and can always go back on it months later.' But Putin's foreign minister made clear on Monday that Russia was rejecting Trump's terms — not yet approved by Kyiv — that would have recognized its control of the Ukrainian territory its army currently controls. Trump has also struggled to make inroads with China's Xi Jinping, who has so far refused to engage into trade talks to dial back the high tariffs now in place that economists fear is already affecting markets and consumers. Trump's last week told Time Magazine that Xi had already called him, which Chinese officials quickly said was false, and his insistence that they've spoken 'numerous times' betrayed a 'degree of desperation' that is 'exposing his weakness and the panic that [Treasury Secretary] Scott Bessent and others have,' Daalder said. 'They decided to go down a rabbit hole, and they're stuck.' The 'reciprocal' tariffs Trump slapped on nearly every country lasted just a week before he lifted most of them. Trade adviser Peter Navarro promised the administration would make '90 deals in 90 days' while the tariffs were paused, but so far none have been announced. That said, the first round of deals with the countries who've been first to engage in talks — Japan, Australia, India, Argentina — could materialize in the coming weeks. But a reset with other major trading partners, including Canada, Mexico and the European Union, appear to be a way off. Europe, like Canada, has been stung by the surprising vitriol from Trump and Vice President JD Vance, who lectured allies during a speech in Munich about being more tolerant of far-right parties and disparaged the entire continent as freeloading in a private Signal group chat. The harsh treatment of Zelenskyy during a Feb. 28 visit to the White House, not to mention Trump's lopsided diplomacy in favor of Putin, has frayed transatlantic ties and caused European leaders to shift quickly away from decades of reliance on the U.S. The White House disputed that Trump, despite his threats to somehow wrest Greenland away from the Danes or to only defend some NATO allies that meet his defense spending benchmarks, was abandoning democratic allies. 'America is a better force for peace and security when it is strongest. And in order for us to get stronger, we have to insist that our allies do their fair share,' said Hughes, the NSC spokesperson who pointed to new defense spending commitments by a number of European allies as proof of their ongoing interest in aligning with America. 'If they're prepared to do their part, there's no better ally in the world than the American people.' Phelim Kine contributed to this report.
Politico
29-04-2025
- Business
- Politico
Trump vowed to end wars, equalize trade. He's delivered something else.
In just over three months, Donald Trump has threatened to annex sovereign territories, hedged on his commitment to America's oldest alliances and slapped tariffs on much of the world — unilaterally ushering in a new and uncertain global order. But at the 100-day mark of his second term, the 'Art of the Deal' author has yet to deliver the big pacts he promised. 'The president's foreign policy orientation is both popular and makes sense: end wars, secure the border and fair trade. That's how he got elected,' said Ian Bremmer, the president of the Eurasia Group, a nonpartisan risk-assessment firm in New York. 'But he is trying to do everything at once and his implementation has been disastrous so far. That's a big piece of why his approval ratings have shot down.' Peace in the Middle East. And in Ukraine. New trade deals around the globe. Trump's campaign bluster suggesting that all these things would be easy underscored his hyperbole and an impatience that has run smack into reality since he retook the White House. But it's not for lack of trying. Returning to the office with four years of presidential experience, Trump has attempted to drive an even more maximalist agenda, striving to fulfill his most ambitious promises, employing power politics to extract concessions from allies and adversaries alike. 'Because the guard rails were gone, because there was no one to guide him or steer him in the way that was in the first term, he came out of the blocks acting upon the perspective that he's had about the world for the last 40 years. He went out and implemented it,' said Ivo Daalder, the president of the nonpartisan Chicago Council on Global Affairs. 'In the process, he's destroyed the most important commodity the United States has had for the last 80 years, which is trust. Allies thought our values and interests mostly coincided and all of that's gone.' Just as the White House is trying to capitalize on the 100-day marker, the Trump administration is facing new evidence of its failures on more traditional foreign policy fronts. Russia on Monday rejected Trump's proposal to end the war in Ukraine , something he promised to do 'on day one.' Hours later, Canadian voters clapped back at Trump with a resounding message, responding to his bullying about becoming America's '51 state' by electing Liberal leader Mark Carney as prime minister. That completed a stunning and ironic inversion of a campaign that, before it had become a national referendum on Trump, a more Trump-aligned conservative appeared likely to win. But the White House is unbothered by Trump's sinking approval numbers and confident that, before too long, trade deals will materialize and other diplomatic endeavors will start to bear fruit. 'With disruption, there's some volatility, but the long term strategy is solid and will reap benefits,' said National Security Council spokesperson Brian Hughes. 'There's a lot of work to do. President Trump is doing it fast, but it all is on a single thread, which is an America First foreign policy.' Long suspicious of America's values-based alliances with democratic allies, Trump has been explicit about his transactional approach to the world, offering to reward countries that want to invest in the U.S. and punishing everyone else. He has unnerved allies in Ottawa and Copenhagen with an imperialism that harkens back to the McKinley era, while at the same time pursuing a legacy as a historic peacemaker. Trump has empowered the businessman Steve Witkoff, officially his Middle East envoy, to simultaneously lead talks in the Middle East, with Iran and Russia. Meanwhile, he has launched a bombing campaign against the Iran-backed Houthis to reopen shipping lanes in the Red Sea, cracked down on border crossings — the White House on Monday highlighted the dramatic drop in apprehensions as one of its biggest early successes — and launched a global trade war that may eventually result in a slew of trade deals but, thus far, has mainly caused economic uncertainty. The White House pointed to other accomplishments: getting Mexico and Canada to strengthen border security; convincing Panama to end its involvement with China's Belt and Road Initiative; securing the release of 46 Americans detained overseas; persuading countries to accept repatriation flights of noncitizens who'd been in the U.S. illegally; and securing more than a trillion dollars in commitments from foreign investors. And two Trump allies outside the White House said there is a unifying principle behind Trump's newfound focus on a sovereign wealth fund, his trade war and even the serious interest in acquiring Greenland and Canada: lessening America's dependence on China by reshoring manufacturing and finding new sources for critical minerals. Hughes, the NSC spokesperson, continued: 'There's no greater force for peace and stability in this world than a strong America at home,' Trump's overarching strategic aim, he said, is 'protecting the Western hemisphere' and engaging in the world, be it in Europe, Asia or the Middle East, 'from the position of strength that [he] creates.' A number of foreign leaders have visited the White House, aiming to put Trump at ease with compliments and concessions. None were as deferential as El Salvador's Nayib Bukele, who joined the president and aides in explaining why it wouldn't be possible to obey an order from the Supreme Court to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a wrongly deported and imprisoned Salvadoran native whom the administration has accused of being a MS-13 gang member. But many of Trump's other efforts to impose his diplomatic will have been ignored by several adversaries, as well as a number of allies. Hamas continues to hold some Israeli hostages more than a month after Trump's threat that there'd be 'HELL TO PAY' if they didn't immediately free everyone. And the proposal to forcibly relocate Palestinians out of Gaza and rebuild it into a 'riviera,' a huge story during the administration's first weeks , has gone unmentioned more recently as allies in the region have been loath to accept resettled Palestinians in Gaza and Trump has turned his focus to the war in Ukraine. Witkoff has courted Vladimir Putin during multiple trips to Russia. For months now, Trump has repeated numerous Kremlin talking points while pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into peace talks. Asked last week what concessions he was demanding of Moscow, Trump said: 'Stopping the war, stopping taking the whole country, pretty big concession.' That comment — overstating the strength of Russia's position on the battlefield, where three years of fighting have yielded modest territorial gains — further clarified Trump's eagerness to end the war. 'The Trump administration wants to get a peace deal and they don't really care what the content of that peace deal is,' said Jeremy Shapiro, research director at the nonpartisan European Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. 'Russia would be idiots not to do it. They will get 90 percent of what they want and can always go back on it months later.' But Putin's foreign minister made clear on Monday that Russia was rejecting Trump's terms — not yet approved by Kyiv — that would have recognized its control of the Ukrainian territory its army currently controls. Trump has also struggled to make inroads with China's Xi Jinping, who has so far refused to engage into trade talks to dial back the high tariffs now in place that economists fear is already affecting markets and consumers. Trump's last week told Time Magazine that Xi had already called him, which Chinese officials quickly said was false, and his insistence that they've spoken 'numerous times' betrayed a 'degree of desperation' that is 'exposing his weakness and the panic that [Treasury Secretary] Scott Bessent and others have,' Daalder said. 'They decided to go down a rabbit hole, and they're stuck.' The 'reciprocal' tariffs Trump slapped on nearly every country lasted just a week before he lifted most of them. Trade adviser Peter Navarro promised the administration would make '90 deals in 90 days' while the tariffs were paused, but so far none have been announced. That said, the first round of deals with the countries who've been first to engage in talks — Japan, Australia, India, Argentina — could materialize in the coming weeks. But a reset with other major trading partners, including Canada, Mexico and the European Union, appear to be a way off. Europe, like Canada, has been stung by the surprising vitriol from Trump and Vice President JD Vance, who lectured allies during a speech in Munich about being more tolerant of far-right parties and disparaged the entire continent as freeloading in a private Signal group chat. The harsh treatment of Zelenskyy during a Feb. 28 visit to the White House , not to mention Trump's lopsided diplomacy in favor of Putin, has frayed transatlantic ties and caused European leaders to shift quickly away from decades of reliance on the U.S. The White House disputed that Trump, despite his threats to somehow wrest Greenland away from the Danes or to only defend some NATO allies that meet his defense spending benchmarks, was abandoning democratic allies. 'America is a better force for peace and security when it is strongest. And in order for us to get stronger, we have to insist that our allies do their fair share,' said Hughes, the NSC spokesperson who pointed to new defense spending commitments by a number of European allies as proof of their ongoing interest in aligning with America. 'If they're prepared to do their part, there's no better ally in the world than the American people.' Phelim Kine contributed to this report.
