Will President Trump extend a statesman-like hand to Theresa May and the UK now that it would really make a difference for both?
Our ally in multiple recent wars, the United Kingdom, is now paralyzed over its attempt to make an acceptable exit from the bureaucracy-encumbered European Union (EU). President Trump applauded this exit (“Brexit”) when it was first proposed, and he applauded the surge of British patriotism that supported it. The US President could now commit a great historical act of statesmanship by offering the United Kingdom an immediate free trade pact. Similar free trade pacts pacts could be offered to other EU countries having difficulty maintaining their sovereignty vis-a-vis the Brussels bureaucracy, and for that matter even to the EU itself, provided it agrees to let its members freely trade with the US and UK and let its member nations maintain immigration control over their own borders.
President Trump has also expressed optimism about reaching a trade settlement with China. With free trade pacts in place with the countries of Europe — and hopefully soon Japan — there would be a united front of the major democratic advanced sector countries in place against the unacceptable trade policies of a militarily hostile China. The principles of such a united front would be to jointly levy severe sanctions on any Chinese company that engages in intellectual property theft or obtains an unacceptable level of preferential support by national or regional Chinese governments.
It doesn’t make sense to thwart Chinese private sector companies that are free of government control, unless there are valid security concerns, e.g., in critical electronics parts.
If the President were to take the statesmanlike move recommended above, he would reverse the recent decline in economic growth in Europe and Japan and the stagnant growth of capital spending in the US. The resulting legacy of continued US and international economic growth and weakening of the Chinese state sector would likely insure that President Trump would win a second term in 2020, rather than be thrown out of office by a world recession.
Click here to go to the previous Founders Broadsheet (“Trade in split Congress likely to be bipartisan but protectionist”)
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