What Is Trump?

A shared strategy requires an agreed definition

(Donald Trump, photo credit: Gage Skidmore)

To pursue an effective strategy with regard to Trump, Americans who want to protect their democracy — along with allies who want Ukraine to win — need to agree on what he represents. For the US constitution, is he a bump in the road, or the end of the road? On NATO, is he calling out free riders (like Canada), or calling time on article 5, the all-for-one principle invoked for the US after 9/11?

Most importantly, is he an autocrat-in-waiting — committed to protecting dictators, while counting on them to return the favour — or is he just a transactional maverick, intent on breaking past patterns and getting better deals?

These are big questions. Countless pundits pronounce on them every day. Those with deep insight into American presidential history deserve a hearing. But pending firmer certainties, we still need to decide what Trump is today.

Is he, as many inside and outside the US still pretend, basically a rational actor? On this reading, tariffs are a visceral but natural response to a quarter century of unwarranted Chinese membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO), which decimated American manufacturing and distorted commerce worldwide. If Trump is ultimately reasonable and logical, albeit temperamental and ill-informed, his hostility to Ukraine can be explained as transitory, subject to evolution as allies and resurgent Reagan Republicans turn up the pressure to make their case. For proponents of this view, Trump may be irrational at times, but the arc of his erratic behaviour bends towards rough coherence in the US interest.