Fear Strikes Out

On Wednesday Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, gave a speech affirming the EU’s willingness to move toward making Canada an “associate member.” Nobody quite knows what that would mean, and it might be mostly symbolic. But it would be a kind of declaration, by both Europe and Canada, of reduced dependence on the United States. And the next day Mark Carney, Canada’s Prime Minster, strongly endorsed the idea.

Donald Trump predictably, reacted with rage, calling it a “hostile act,” threatening to cut off all trade with Europe.

And nobody cared.

Last year the EU responded to Trump’s clearly illegal tariffs not by retaliating, but by making a humiliating deal. But at this point Europe has apparently decided to stop fearing Trump.

Canada’s defiance is even more remarkable. Canada’s economy is extremely dependent on the United States both as an export market and as a supplier, while the EU has historically been a vastly less important trading partner:

So Canada has a lot to lose from trade conflict with the U.S.

Furthermore, geography does not favor a Canadian pivot toward Europe. Distance still matters a lot for world trade, especially for complex value chains like the one that links the U.S. and Canadian auto sectors. And to take some representative distances, Toronto is only 435 miles from Chicago, but 3,935 miles from Frankfurt. So one might think that Carney would be cautious about offending the man who is still president of his giant neighbor.

But foreign leaders have more or less given up trying to placate Trump.

When I try to think about the current state of Trumpism, I find myself revisiting Machiavelli’s The Prince, which is, after all, sort of a user’s manual for autocrats. Machiavelli is often cited as having said that it is better to be feared than loved, but what he actually said was somewhat more complex:

Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, it is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with … Nevertheless a prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred.

Obviously Trump isn’t doing well on the “avoiding hatred” front. Pew’s survey of international views of the United Statesshows a stunning collapse in confidence that the U.S. president will do the right thing:

Domestic polls, of course, show very low approval for Trump. What’s truly striking, however, is that those who disapprove of Trump mostly disapprove “strongly.” The Navigator poll, for example, shows 48 percent of Americans strongly disapproving of Trump, much larger than the total number approving and 2 ½ times the number who strongly approve.

So many people both at home and around the world hate Trump. That has, however, been true since quite early in the Trump II administration. What has really changed is the dissipation of fear.

Globally, the most obvious reason nations have stopped fearing Trump is the debacle in Iran. At the start of the Iran war most people imagined that, whatever else one might say about Trump’s America, it had by far the world’s most powerful military. But what we’ve actually seen is one failure after another, as the U.S. military has failed to subdue the Iranian regime, been forced to abandon some of its own bases in the region, and depleted its supplies of munitions. Now America has refused to help Saudi Arabia against the Houthis — perhaps because we no longer have the necessary capabilities.

What about economic power? Trump clearly could do a lot of economic damage to Canada. But the U.S. economy would also suffer from all-out trade war. And while the damage from trade war would be much smaller as a percentage of U.S. GDP than Canadian GDP, Canadians appear to be solidly behind Carney, while Americans, to the extent they even know what is happening, appear by a small plurality to support Canada’s position:

And yes, foreign leaders are looking at the likely results of the U.S. midterm elections. From fiftyplusone:

So they look at the prospect of a president who will have less ability than ever to punish his perceived enemies, at home or abroad.

Globally, then, Trump is in exactly the opposite position of where Machiavelli said a prince should be: hated but not feared.

The situation in the U.S. is somewhat less blatant. Businesses — even businesses like the auto industry, which have a lot to lose from trade wars — remain quiet, presumably because the Trump administration retains considerable power to punish them via contracts, regulations and so on. (In many ways Trump has been acting as if he wants to destroy the U.S. auto industry, or at least leave it hopelessly uncompetitive as the world electrifies.) Even in America, however, fear of Trump is palpably fading.

Now, even a massive blue wave in November won’t end Trump’s ability to do immense damage to the nation and world — damage that he may well do out of sheer spite. He is, after all, exactly the kind of person who will feel, not that he failed America, but that America failed him.

More about that in future posts. For now, let’s cautiously celebrate a clear decline in the fear Trump inspires, abroad and at home.

MUSICAL CODA