{"id":79670,"date":"2017-04-27T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-04-26T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/blog-post\/100-days-of-trade-with-trump-reality-catches-up-with-america-first\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T11:20:39","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T09:20:39","slug":"100-days-of-trade-with-trump-reality-catches-up-with-america-first","status":"publish","type":"blog-post","link":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/en\/blog-post\/100-days-of-trade-with-trump-reality-catches-up-with-america-first\/","title":{"rendered":"100 days of trade with Trump: Reality catches up with \u00abAmerica First\u00bb"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n\nDonald J. Trump has the most beautiful campaign promises you\u2019ve ever seen. They\u2019re the best. You\u2019ll love them.<\/i><\/b>\u00a0And indeed \u2013 remarkably many of his campaign promises were implemented: a travel ban, a heavily conservative nomination to the Supreme Court, a halt on hiring in federal agencies, and a reversal of climate policy. But in trade policy, Trump\u2019s administration is much more ambiguous.<\/b>\n\n<\/div>\n\n
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\n\nThe Trump administration suffers from a great rift between Trump\u2019s allegiances to alt-right nationalists and deregulation-seeking entrepreneurs. During his campaign, Donald Trump combined the thrust of these two particular groups: On the one hand, he committed to an economic nationalist rhetoric of \u00abAmerica First\u00bb, which resonates far beyond the centre-right spectrum \u2013 all the way to the alt-right movement, now prominently represented by White House Chief Strategist\u00a0Steve Bannon<\/a>. On the other hand, Trump promised to dismantle the regulatory state. Trump is a businessman with illustrious friends, who like him built their success by trading globally mobile capital, services and labour forces (including,\u00a0campaign merchandise made in China<\/a>).\n\nTrump\u2019s trade policy sits uneasily between two contradictory goals and groups: a nationalist-protectionist economic agenda, and (his very own) globalist business that requires further deregulation. While economic nationalists vilify free trade, global businesses need it. To add to the mix, underneath this top-level clash, the administration is still\u00a0heavily understaffed<\/a>, including the US Trade Representative. This situation makes it cumbersome to navigate the complex landscape of trade. Trump\u2019s trade policy has therefore been above all slow and ineffective.\n\nChina:\u00a0<\/b>\u00abIt\u2019s not so easy<\/b>\u00bb\n\nIn his\u00a0\u00ab100-day action plan to Make America Great Again\u00bb<\/a>, Trump promised to \u00abdirect the Secretary of the Treasury to label China a currency manipulator\u00bb. Yet on 12 April 2017, Trump flipped his stance:\u00a0\u00ab<\/a>They’re not currency manipulators<\/a>.\u00bb Whether or not China undervalues the Renminbi to beat competitors in the US market is off the Trump\u2019s agenda. A major campaign promise is thus broken.\n\nTrump regularly criticises the US\u2019s negative trade balance with China (the fact that Chinese imports to the US significantly exceed the volume of American exports to China). But as any student of economics would know, negative trade balances are\u00a0not necessarily bad<\/a>\u00a0for the US. They deliver affordable goods and provide direly needed capital for reinvestment in the US. Abandoning the trade deficit thus not only makes limited economic sense. As the case of\u00a0steel<\/a>produced in China showed in April 2017, it also\u00a0brings the US under fire<\/a>\u00a0from the IMF and WTO.\n\nTrump\u2019s approach to China has been clumsy and unsteady. The administration also struggles to link trade to other diplomatic issues: During President Xi\u2019s visit in the US, Trump\u00a0tweeted<\/a>\u00a0that \u00aba trade deal with the U.S. will be far better for them if they solve the North Korean problem!\u00bb. Granting a free trade deal to China would run entirely counter to an \u00abAmerica First\u00bb trade policy. President Trump is slowly waking up to the reality that China is a major player not easily reckoned with. His trade policy towards China will likely remain timid and symbolical.\n\nFree trade agreements: Glacial bureaucratic change<\/b>\n\n\u00abNAFTA is the worst trade deal maybe ever signed anywhere, but certainly ever signed in this country\u00bb, Trump\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0during his campaign. In the meantime, Trumps announcement of renegotiating the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico was watered down. The threat of pulling out was\u00a0removed altogether<\/a>. Instead, Trump commissioned a \u00ab90-day study<\/a>\u00a0of abusive trade practices that contribute to the United States\u2019 trade deficit\u00bb. Not quite the resolve on trade that candidate Trump promised.\n\nTrump has however fulfilled his promise of\u00a0withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership<\/a>\u00a0(TPP), a regional free trade agreement in the Pacific. Its demise is considered to give China an advantage in the region. Instead of pursuing regional agreements, the USA will likely pursue the conclusion of bilateral free trade agreements, if any at all.\n\nYet it seems that for Trump, not all trade deals are bad. When meeting Angela Merkel a few weeks ago, after\u00a0realising EU member states cannot conclude individual free trade agreements<\/a>, Trump prioritised exploring an EU-US trade deal over a UK-US deal. A continuation of the\u00a0TTIP negotiations<\/a>\u00a0is unlikely, but President Trump does not rule out future trade deals. In doing so, he risks losing support from his economic nationalist voters.\n\nConclusion<\/b>\n\nIt\u2019s all but forgotten after 100 days of Trump trade policy: Running a country is\u00a0nothing<\/i>\u00a0like running a business. Beyond the first 100 days, Trump\u2019s trade policy will remain a zig-zag between shocking rhetoric and heavily diluted, clumsy policy implementation. The common denominator of economic nationalism and deregulatory enthusiasm is small. While this alliance just about works in the mid-term, it will make both Trump\u2019s constituents and the US\u2019s partners weary. Recently, American diplomats\u00a0blocked a G20 statement<\/a>\u00a0committing members to free trade. Gareth Evans, a former minister from Australia, soon after argued that Australia should recognise China as a \u00abglobal rule-maker\u00bb. Many others might follow suit and weaken their cooperation with the US.\n\nAcross the globe, the rift of the Trump administration on trade will quickly be exploited by other global powers. Policy-makers will have to learn to take Trump\u2019s boisterous signals with a pinch of doubt. And inevitably, they will also start doubting American leadership in trade policy.\n\n \n\nIn den n\u00e4chsten zwei Wochen werden wir mit der Reihe \u00ab100 Tage Trump\u00bb in unterschiedlichen Beitr\u00e4gen die neue amerikanische Exekutive und deren Pr\u00e4sident, Donald Trump, ins Zentrum der Aufmerksamkeit r\u00fccken. Aus vielerlei Blickwinkeln analysieren unsere Blogger, wie Amerika dabei vorgeht \u00abto be great again\u00bb.<\/b>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":68606,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"archive-status":[],"region":[],"custom-themes":[],"class_list":["post-79670","blog-post","type-blog-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog-post\/79670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog-post"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/blog-post"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"archive-status","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/archive-status?post=79670"},{"taxonomy":"region","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/region?post=79670"},{"taxonomy":"custom-themes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/custom-themes?post=79670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}