He's Always Been Like This

Trump's impervious to change, reason, or evidence

An excerpt from something for the day job—a description of a new-to-me (and, looking around, new-to-the-open-Internet) discussion of a 1988 speech by that man that sounds basically like what he’s saying today.

Donald J. Trump has been a prominent figure in U.S. society for decades, having leveraged his family’s real-estate holdings in the outer boroughs of New York City into parallel and serial careers as a hotelier, casino developer, and television personality.[1] He was the subject of attention in the New York Times and Daily News from the mid-1970s both for his prominent real estate and hotel deals in Manhattan and for federally alleged racial discrimination in Trump Management’s apartment complexes.[2] Although few genuinely obscure personalities become president, especially in the post-Civil War era, the duration of Trump’s pre-presidential notoriety is rivaled among other U.S. chief executives perhaps only by George Washington, who helped spark the French and Indian War during the 1750s; Ronald Reagan, the actor; and Joseph R. Biden, whose senatorial and vice-presidential career spanned four decades before his term as president was sandwiched by Trump’s tenures in office.

As a result of Trump’s decades-long prominence, we have a remarkably well documented record of his policy views dating long before his presidential runs. A review of this record demonstrates an equally remarkably consistent set of Trump’s views on foreign policy. Trump has long viewed establishment foreign policy figures and approaches with scorn. In a 1989 speech called “The World According to Trump” delivered to a trade association in St. Petersburg, Florida, for instance, he rejected then-President George H.W. Bush’s vision of a “kinder, gentler nation” as a recipe for national disaster.[3] Instead, he urged a tough approach that bypassed traditional paradigms in pursuit of unilateral, neomercantilist goals. Comparing this speech with his second inaugural address reveals a striking degree of continuity and suggests that Trump’s views, although radical, possess, at least, the value of consistency.

In the 1988 speech, as in his second inaugural, Trump prescribed dealing with U.S. trade imbalances with Europe and Japan by implementing huge import duties—tariffs—to force concessions: “First you say to Japan, ‘You come to us. We don't go to you.’ Then you say, ‘Get your a-- over here or we're going to drop a 20 percent tax on all your products.’” Similarly, he insisted that allies should be billed for services rendered. Trump urged the United States to take 25 percent of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia’s oil profits in exchange for U.S. protection (in a speech delivered a year before Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait). Trump admitted that “mobsters” call such a ploy “protection money”, but that the funds could help balance the budget.

Similarly, Trump rejected the use of conventional diplomats in negotiations. Instead of “civil servants who can’t get jobs doing anything else”, he recommended that foreign trade dealings should be carried out by skilled private-sector negotiators, like Carl Icahn or George Steinbrenner. He argued that diplomacy should be matched with threats to create urgency: “We ought to tell Iran, ‘Folks, you have one week to give us back all our hostages or all bets are off.’” After all, Trump asked, “What is the purpose of military strength if you don't use it occasionally to set things straight?” Trump argued that all options should be on the table to accomplish U.S. goals: “Taking hostages is okay, Trump says, as long as the other side engages in such terrorism first”, the reporter covering the speech noted.

The continuities between this speech and Trump’s second inaugural address—and his actions during his second term—are so clear as to require no elaboration. Nor were these off-the-cuff remarks, delivered once and repented later. He made similar statements to a commencement event at Lehigh University and, in abbreviated terms, in full-page advertisements taken out in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Boston Globe in 1987—a move that launched the first speculations that the developer might seek the presidency.[4]

The starkness of these continuities suggests that among the many potential motivations for Trump’s foreign policies is, simply, that he believes in a straightforward—if simplistic—conception of the national interest. Rather than viewing alliances or trade relationships as means of developing positive-sum interactions that can pay off in many ways, Trump sees international relations as a series of immediate transactions to be arranged so that each interaction works to the immediate benefit of the United States. From this, it follows that the militarily strong should charge protection fees to the militarily vulnerable (those who can pay, at least), and that failing to do so means that the stronger party is getting ripped off. A corollary of this view is that allies are likelier to exploit the United States than rivals. From the perspective of a zero-sum thinker, beneficiaries of U.S. security and trade arrangements must, by definition, be gaining something at the expense of the United States.

To be clear, I do not claim that these principles reflect the totality of influences on the policymaking of Trump’s administration. Principles help policymakers adjudicate options and help participants in a process shape, or at least sell, policies to senior officials’ liking. Like any administration, the second Trump administration has featured divisions within its advisers, its broader coalition, and between congressional and executive branch Republicans. In foreign policy, the interests and influence of external actors matter as well and can serve as additional constraint—or inducements—for policy choices by the president.

These principles are not ethical maxims, the result of engagement with scholarship, or the gleanings of practical experience—Trump has no significant background in statecraft, diplomacy, or international relations theory. Rather, I use “principles” as Morgenthau described realist principles: guideposts for action in international relations.[5] It is also important to note that this list of principles is not simply transcribing Trump’s own account of himself, such as his routinely trumpeted claims that he is putting “America first” in a way unlike that of his predecessors. The point is not to praise—or, for that matter, to criticize—Trump, but to understand his core approach, or “operational code”.[6]

What is as important as what these principles contain is what they lack. It is not going too far to suggest that Trump is something of the ultimate relativist in international affairs. For Trump, there is no room for ideals, norms, or precedent; there are no morally good or bad countries, outcomes, or policies, only interest defined in terms of advantage. In fact, there can be substantial gains from violating norms of good behavior in the pursuit of negotiating leverage, and so only a fool would refuse to participate in them. Crucially, there is no room even for the “shadow of the future” (the prospects of gains from future interactions) to induce cooperation in the present—all accounts must be settled immediately.

Why does this matter? Trump doesn’t arrive at his policies through an evaluation of the environment—he arrives at them by gut instinct and a desire to always be on the side of the dominating force, even if that’s economically or otherwise irrational. The sources of his policy beliefs aren’t amenable to contestation or correction. And as long as he’s choosing people and has the final say on policy, we will get, at best, wild changes and then wrenching stops just before the bottom falls out. It’s cold comfort that, at least, he’s not craven in his beliefs—this is just who he is. Here he stands; he literally can do no other.

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[1] Although often discussed as a social-media president, Trump’s long association with television was vastly more important to his role in the national imagination. James Poniewozik, Audience of One: Donald Trump, Television, and the Fracturing of America (New York City NY: Liveright Publishing, 2019).

[2] Joseph P. Fried, “2 West Side Rail Yards Are Sought for Housing,” The New York Times, July 30, 1974; Joseph P. Fried, “Trump Promises to End Race Bias: Realty Management Concern Reaches Accord With U.S. on Housing Plan 15,000 Apartments Agreement Satisfactory,” The New York Times, June 11, 1975.

[3] Philip D Stern, “Foreign Policy, Courtesy Trump,” St. Petersburg Times, August 17, 1989.

[4] Donald J. Trump, “Advertisement: An Open Letter from Donald J. Trump on Why America Should Stop Paying to Defend Countriest Hat Can Afford to Defend Themselves,” The New York Times, September 2, 1987; Valerie Berton, “Donald Trump Warns Lehigh Graduates About AIDS and Foreign Competitors,” Morning Call, June 6, 1988.

[5] Hans Joachim Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 5th edition (New York City, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972).

[6] Alexander L. George, “The ‘Operational Code’: A Neglected Approach to the Study of Political Leaders and Decision-Making,” International Studies Quarterly 13, no. 2 (1969): 190–222, https://doi.org/10.2307/3013944.