Trump’s Asia obsessions

Three developments out of Asia last week underscore the growing consequences of President Trump’s willingness to subsume U.S. global interests to his personal obsessions. Remember those much-ballyhooed Donald Trump-Kim Jong Un meetings, in which the North Korean dictator won the honor of a face-to-face audience with a fawning U.S. president while giving up nothing serious in return? Last week, a Pyongyang flunky declared it will only “discuss nuclear issues again when [the U.S.] withdraws all of its hostile policy against us.”

As Trump has wooed Kim, he has taken a harder and harder line with erstwhile ally South Korea, raising Seoul’s bill for the presence of 28,000 American troops on the peninsula from about $1 billion to $5 billion. The rich nation should pay more, but

Trump, in typical fashion, has paired an exorbitant hike with protection-racket-style threats to withdraw the troops entirely. That has pushed South Korea into China’s sphere of influence; the two nations’ defense ministers inked a security agreement last week.

Finally, Trump seems ready to veto a proHong Kong democracy legislation that passed Congress nearly unanimously, obsessed as he is with getting a trade “win” from China after tariffs and retaliatory tariffs have cost the U.S. treasury billions. Which means that Beijing, which has been escalating its crackdown on protesters who cry out to protect their city’s remaining freedom, will have a freer hand to do its dirty work.

So much for a president running the country like a business. With this president, it’s never business; it’s always personal.