He announced—in the vaguest possible terms—that he had talked with NATO’s leadership and secured a fabulous deal regarding Greenland, which he’d been threatening to invade or purchase for months.
What details that did emerge suggested that what Trump “won” was a chance to beef up America’s military presence in Greenland and the right to purchase minerals and other natural resources from that nation.
If so, these are rights the United States already possessed through treaties and that the people of both Greenland and its partner nation, Denmark, would have granted upon polite request.
So, the president kicked up a storm, sent the U.S. and world stock markets tumbling and prompted our longtime and most devoted allies not just to denounce it but to move troops in opposition to us so he could secure a win we already had.
No matter.
The MAGA crowd that long ago drank the Trump-brand Kool-Aid began touting this episode as another great triumph.
Ignorant, as usual, of both fact and history, they lauded the president, saying that he’d bolstered our security in Greenland and claimed new resources for us without spending a dollar.
Right.
Trump’s ill-advised and ill-informed bullying of Greenland and Denmark prompted a 2% drop in the U.S. stock market. That adds up to about $2 trillion in losses.
Stock market increases and decreases most often are not just cyclical but natural. Sudden ones like this drop, though, often have specific causes, such as a natural disaster, a terrorist attack or some other unforeseen circumstance.
This one, though, was a presidential product, a direct result of Donald Trump threatening war with nations that had been some of our closest allies just to “win” concessions the U.S. secured 80 years ago.
That $2 trillion loss was an unforced error, a self-inflicted wound produced by presidential hubris and ignorance.
As a bonus, Trump managed to alienate trading partners and close markets to U.S. businesses. He’s even succeeded in driving Canada, our neighbor and once one of our staunchest friends, into the arms of China.
It takes a special kind of diplomatic, economic and foreign-policy incompetence to do that.
But then again, we’ve seen Donald Trump conjure up this kind of magic before.
When he first took office a year ago, he decided to launch a trade war with Chile. He vowed to slap tariffs on Chilean products that reached dizzying, even stupefying heights. He boasted that he would make Chile beg to do business on his terms.
The Chileans responded with their own tariffs, ones that targeted some of the United States’ most vulnerable industries and workers. Americans, many of them in states that had backed Trump, started first to complain and then to howl.
And Trump called off his trade war with Chile.
When the Chilean government shrugged that it, of course, would honor the trade agreements already in place, Trump—seemingly oblivious to the pain he’d caused his own supporters—crowed that he had secured a huge victory.
Just as he did with Greenland, the president created massive disruption, huge losses and senseless suffering just to reaffirm the status quo.
But it’s not really the status quo.
He’s managed to align the rest of the world against us.
When the leaders of the world’s other nations—including some that have been our friends for decades, if not centuries—met for the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, they trooped, one after another, to the microphone to denounce their former ally, the United States.
They declared that America had broken faith with them. They said the United States was not the defender of the world’s peace, but a threat to it.
Most of all, they said—again and again and again—that they couldn’t trust us.
Well done, Mr. President.
Donald Trump may continue to fool his followers into believing that he’s a world-beater.
But the rest of the world sees the truth.
They’ve taken his measure. They’ve identified him as bully who backs down when confronted and as a self-proclaimed master negotiator who hasn’t a clue what to do if his tactics of bluster and braggadocio don’t work.
With Greenland, as with Chile, Trump claimed victory after he gained us nothing and cost us a great deal.
So much “winning.”
