08-04-2025
- Business
- South China Morning Post
What the Asian Tigers can teach Trump
It is clear from Donald Trump's
second inauguration speech that his role model is neither Franklin D. Roosevelt nor Theodore Roosevelt but William McKinley. The current US president's admiration for the 25th president is often associated with the high McKinley Tariff of 1890. This was passed when Benjamin Harrison was president and McKinley was still an Ohio congressman. But as president of a rapidly industrialising United States, McKinley actually moderated his stance on tariffs.
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Trump's fascination with McKinley is perhaps shaped by his other, sometimes overlooked, legacy. McKinley presided over the US' largest territorial expansion outside North America. After the Spanish-American War of 1898, the US gained control of Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines, before annexing Hawaii in 1900.
Under the Treaty of Paris signed in 1898, the US paid Spain US$20 million for the Philippines. This could be the historic precedent for Trump's proposal to
buy Greenland from Denmark.
Leaving aside the merits, costs or feasibility of territorial expansion, making America greater in area may be the most coherent part of Trump's vision. With regard to manufacturing, it is questionable whether it can be revived through
tariffs . Unlike in East Asia, the election cycle of the US is not conducive to consistent, successful industrial policy.
But can Trump really go down in the annals of American history as the president who made America bigger? While once the US acquired territory from the declining Spanish empire, it now faces a formidable rising power in China. Is territorial expansion even wise in this day and age?
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