After his foreign adventures Trump needs to be looking closer to home
Between his hostile performance at the G7 and newfound bromance with Kim Jong Un, Donald Trump has clearly been enjoying a break from Washington. It’s not surprising, given his attempts to bring about change at home are being frustrated: almost all of his recent domestic initiatives have been blocked by Congress, the Supreme Court, or both.
In the current absence of domestic accomplishments, Trump has been thoroughly seduced by the siren song of foreign policy, with its quick wins and uncomplicated photo-ops. This is a well-trodden patch of quicksand for American presidents. Even the most seasoned politicians and astute constitutional scholars enter the Oval Office with ambitions that outmatch their authority and political capital.
The international agenda becomes all the more alluring when presidents discover that they can’t even plan a breakfast meeting without intervention from half a dozen policy aides and irate donors.
It is an office designed to be undermined at every turn by the judiciary and the legislature – and often by members of one’s own party. The founders, fearful of creating another king against whom we would eventually need to rebel, made sure that the executive was, by far, the weakest of the three branches of government.
This, of course, is not the job Trump signed up for – it’s not a job description which would appeal to anyone with enough ego to apply for the role in the first place – yet it is the job he must nevertheless get on with.
There are exceptional moments in history when matters of foreign policy are so grave as to require the president’s full and undivided attention – such moments almost always necessitate a declaration of war – but we are fortunate enough to live in an age where domestic concerns reign supreme.
There was a time when, during the campaign, Trump read these tea leaves correctly. He promised to get money out of professional politics, to get US veterans decent healthcare, and to tackle the opioid crisis.
It is unglamorous work which will involve a lot of wrangling with Congress, but this brand of meat-andpotatoes politics is what will get the GOP through this November’s midterms, and what will get the president re-elected in two and a half years’ time.
Unfortunately, such sensible solutions have been abandoned in recent months in favour of geopolitical score-settling, in the form of tariffs and insults lobbed at close allies. This is not what the country needs at the moment, and is certainly not what will endear him to his base.
Trump’s thoroughly wrong-headed view of tariffs as simply another tool in his foreign policy arsenal further imperils his re-election hopes.
There are few Americans alive today who can recount in personal terms the costs of the Smoot-Hawley tariffs and America’s isolationist policies in the Thirties. The president’s bellicose and unnecessary regime of tariffs run a real risk of making such personal
at telegraph.co.uk/ opinion experience with economic hardship commonplace once again.
While the economy has been strong over the past year, it need not always remain so.
Even the briefest overview of economic history tells us that when a market rises spectacularly, we can, in time, expect it to fall. It is the role of modern American presidents to delay and cushion that fall as much as humanly possible.
Rather than embarking on trade wars – which cannot be “won”, and always disadvantage both parties – Trump should be working to maintain the economic surplus which his administration helped to create by unburdening American companies of unnecessary regulation.
While the prospect of a nucleararmed North Korea should be enough to keep anyone up at night, the real focus of Trump’s presidency should be finding a way to not destroy the country’s run of domestic prosperity.
Trump may not join the select handful of presidents who have been judged on the basis of their diplomatic or military prowess. This, by the way, is a reason for optimism – it reminds us that the country’s present wounds are largely self-inflicted, and therefore simpler to cure.
Like the vast majority of the men who have occupied his office, Trump will be judged on the performance of the economy during his time at the helm. This is what will decide whether or not he is re-elected, and it is what will form consensus opinion on his legacy.
The Nobel Prize (God help us all) can wait. The economy can’t, stupid.
Molly Kiniry is a researcher at the Legatum Institute
They think the rise of public transport is inevitable, and the solution to every problem you can imagine: climate change, the housing crisis, even loneliness. For them it is a triumph of collective action, with a nobility the car can never possess. The class of people who believe such things don’t see nationalisation or vast subsidies as a throwback to the Seventies, but as modern tools for achieving their aim of killing off driving. In Europe, Left-wing politicians wish to make public transport “free” to boost user numbers. Sadiq Khan’s fares freeze threatens to bankrupt London’s transport authority, but it is part of a wider plan to get people off the roads.
Reports last week that the number of people using the rail network is falling must have come, therefore, as some psychological blow. Bus use is also decreasing in large parts of the country. Passenger numbers on the Tube have dropped. Pro-public transport commentators are desperate to blame all this on temporary or fixable factors: weather, expensive tickets, even Brexit. The alternative – that we are on the cusp of a mini revolution entirely at odds with their dogma – would shake their ideology to its core.
Obviously there are problems in the transport network, but there are other potential explanations for these trends. There is evidence that remote working is finally taking hold, accelerated by people moving further
Meat-andpotatoes politics is what will get the GOP through this November’s midterms, and what will get the president re-elected in two and a half years’ time
Electric and driverless cars promise to slash air pollution and cut congestion while delivering far more autonomy than any train could manage
at telegraph.co.uk/ opinion