America First/America Alone/America Last

The world is troubled. America is troubled. There’s a pall hanging over us, an uneasiness, that things are going to get worse. Even those who deny climate change are inundated by the same flood waters, face the same hurricanes, endure the same droughts and wildfires, and get infected by the same insect bites from migrating and infected bugs as those who accept man-induced climate change as real.

Even those who believe passionately in feeding the rich to trickle down to the rest of us face the same debt burden rising income inequality that those experts who know that this trickle-down theory has always been a failed effort; it never works. 70% of working Americans have the same or lower earning power they had four decades ago. Those new jobs? Either lower paying work, independent contractor employment (gig work) or top dollars reserved only for highly educated or trained experts, not that old middle-class blue-collar segment that will never get their jobs back. The new tax cut may have worked well for the wealthy, but it sure had very little for the rest of us. Not to mention the massive deficit it caused; the federal budget now contains more in deficit interest payments than it does in defense allocations.

Donald Trump is hardly the cause of this malaise, although he caters to those insecurities, makes promises he cannot keep, and generally his policies will accelerate the demise of the United States against the rest of the world that is learning how to ignore our bullying demands and simply work-around our obstreperous behavior. Trump is reflective of something bigger, something that so many Americans caught in a time warp of hyper-accelerating change do not understand. The government is investing less and less in “America” with each passing year. Less for education, less for infrastructure, less for job-creating research and less for productivity-enhancing healthcare. But change has grown from gentle waves washing up onto our shores into a tsunami of disruption.

Unfortunately for America, when Donald Trump leaves office, his populist base is not going to disband. Indeed, many of the populist axioms that underlie the movement that elected him have seeped deeper into the American psyche than we might have estimated. Author Robert Kagan, writing an op-ed for the September 23^rd New York Times, explains:

“President Trump may not enjoy majority support these days, but there’s good reason to believe that his ‘America First’ approach to the world does. There has been no popular outcry against Mr. Trump’s trade battles with Canada, Mexico and the European allies. Experts suggest we are in for a long international trade war, no matter who the next president may be. After all, even Hillary Clinton had to disown her support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership in the last election. The old free-trade consensus is gone.

“Mr. Trump’s immigration policies may be more popular with Republicans than with Democrats, but few Democratic politicians are running on a promise to bring more immigrants into the country. And just as in the 1920s, isolationism joins anti-immigration sentiment and protectionism as a pillar of America Firstism.

“The old consensus about America’s role as upholder of global security has collapsed in both parties. Russia may have committed territorial aggression against Ukraine. But Republican voters follow Mr. Trump in seeking better ties, accepting Moscow’s forcible annexation of Crimea and expanding influence in the Middle East (even if some of the president’s subordinates do not). They applaud Mr. Trump for seeking a dubious deal with North Korea just as they once condemned Democratic presidents for doing the same thing. They favor a trade war with China but have not consistently favored military spending increases to deter a real war.”

The reality is that “globalism,” countries designing uniform systems to live, trade and work together – literally an American invention – is the only way a modern planet can work. Going back to a world of gunboat diplomacy, colonialism, bi-lateral trade agreements, big-bully-nations calling the shots and forcing the world to kowtow to their demands are gone. There is too much wealth, too much power spread around the world for one nation to believe it can shape the world to its demanded mold.

But rejecting globalism, particularly as China and Europe become the new champions of that necessary global system, is still America’s new path. As Mr. Trump’s disastrous recent foray to the United Nations severely illustrates, with the exception of Israel and a few Eastern bloc nations, the United States is losing power, influence and credibility faster than a lightning strike. Writing for the September 29^th Los Angeles Times, Tracy Wilkinson summarizes the results of Trump’s badly-received efforts at the United Nations:

“President Trump’s second appearance at the U.N. General Assembly did not get the response he probably sought from the 193 countries gathered in New York this week… Some leaders and diplomats openly laughed at his boasts. He failed to win support for his hard-line policies on Iran, Venezuela, an international war crimes court, climate change and migration.

“French President Emmanuel Macron scolded him, accusing him of abandoning the foundation of today’s world order and global cooperation enshrined by the U.N. itself… In the end, Trump’s ‘America first’ agenda meant America was mostly alone during his four days at the U.N. this week.

“Leaders who once courted Trump, attempted to gain his ear, or tried to persuade him to support global institutions that long were U.S. foreign policy priorities, made clear they would forge on without him on multiple issues of concern.

“When Trump and his aides sought to unify the world against Iran, for example, European allies disagreed with his withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal. They even joined Russia and China to announce a payments system intended to circumvent U.S. sanctions.

“And when Trump chaired a Security Council meeting that he initially had wanted to focus on threats from Iran, he sat in silence as leader after leader praised the landmark disarmament deal he had quit, and the need for global cooperation.

“In his General Assembly address, Trump similarly criticized a new U.N. pact aimed at easing the global refugee and migration crisis, saying ‘migration should not be governed by an international body’ but by individual countries… That drew almost no support. Officials noted that virtually every nation had signed the accord except the United States and Hungary.

“Some pushed back against Trump’s exhortation of patriotism and national sovereignty over globalism and multilateral efforts to combat the world’s ills… ‘This path of unilateralism leads us directly to withdrawal and conflict, to widespread confrontation between everyone, to the detriment of all — even, eventually, of those who believe they are the strongest,’ Macron told the General Assembly.”

Going it alone is expensive. U.S. policies, even those that might have found traction with other nations willing to share the costs in the past, are now ours and ours alone. We have to pay full freight… alone. As trade agreements offer benefits to the citizens of the signatory nations that are not accorded to non-signatory countries, as the United States withdraws from and avoid such multinational accords, it is our citizens, our businesses that are denied those benefits.

As tariffs and trade restrictions raise barriers to international companies trying to do business here, it is our consumers who pay the higher prices and it is our businesses who either have to move operations overseas or accept that they will lose business to companies that avoid those American barriers. As we deny immigration to highly-qualified STEM experts and their families, it is those countries that welcome them with open arms who will generate the profits of the new businesses and technologies they invent. In short, on a tangible and measurable basis, populism offers mere slogans but no solutions; it’s ugly assumptions – often laced with racism and anti-democratic rhetoric – virtually always produce the opposite result.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if you think the battle over the Brett Kavanaugh appointment was nasty, you ain’t seen nuffin’ yet!