Kimberly Ann Elliott
While campaigning for U.S. president, Donald Trump sold himself as a great negotiator who would get tough and get things done. That image took a big hit after Trump’s capitulation to Congress over his needless government shutdown earlier this year, and his failure to get additional funding for his border wall. It took another hit last week when three of Trump’s foreign policy priorities suffered setbacks: Iran announced that it would stop adhering to some provisions of the international deal curbing its nuclear program; North Korea resumed ballistic missile launches; and Beijing reneged on commitments aimed at resolving the U.S.-China trade war.
To underscore his apparent toughness, Trump took new punitive actions against each country. But a resolution of the underlying problems in all three foreign policy negotiations remains elusive. If anything, they could get much worse.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as the Iranian nuclear deal is formally known, aimed to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapons capacity, which, when the deal was struck in 2015, was thought to be no more than a year away. The agreement required Iran to take steps, subject to close monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency, that would foreclose that possibility for more than a decade. In exchange, Tehran was supposed to get relief from crippling economic sanctions.
Despite Tehran’s documented compliance with the deal, Trump lambasted the agreement as too weak because it does not also address Iran’s missile program or its support for militant groups like Hezbollah and other activities in the Middle East—and probably because it was made under President Barack Obama. He withdrew from the JCPOA last spring and began reimposing sanctions, which drew strong opposition from the other signatories to the deal: close U.S. allies in Europe, plus Russia and China.
Iran’s response was restrained, though, and the government initially continued to comply with the terms of the deal. On May 8, however, it announced it would resume some restricted activities, albeit relatively minor ones: holding on to its excess enriched uranium and heavy water—potential material in building nuclear weapons—rather than transferring them to other countries, as the agreement requires. Tehran called on Europe to find a way to keep importing its oil, so that it received the economic benefits it expected from sanctions relief under the agreement. Iran has said that if it is not satisfied with the response, it will resume other activities that could put it back on a path to having a nuclear weapons capability.
In response to Iran’s announcement, Trump imposed additional sanctions aimed at Iran’s non-oil exports. The administration also announced that it was accelerating the deployment of an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf, and sending B-52 bombers as well, to protect against alleged threats to American troops. All of this seems headed away from a peaceful resolution of the problems with Iran and toward further destabilization of the Middle East, with the escalating threats and intelligence warnings echoing the run-up to the Iraq War.
Not long after reneging on the nuclear deal with Iran last year, Trump opted for a different tack with North Korea. After an initial bout of threats and name-calling with Kim Jong Un, Trump agreed to meet the dictator in Singapore. He came out of the summit saying the two leaders “fell in love” and that the nuclear threat from Pyongyang had been handled. A second summit in Hanoi didn’t go so well. But Trump continued to express optimism about the prospects for negotiations.
It is hard to see how Trump’s attitude toward negotiations with China, Iran and North Korea is “making America great again.”
The one concrete achievement that Trump could point to from his relationship with Kim was a cessation in the regime’s testing of nuclear weapons and missiles. That ended last week when North Korea launched two ballistic missiles, although not the long-range variety that most concerns Washington. Also last week, the administration announced that it had seized a ship that North Korea was using to smuggle coal out of the country. It followed mounting evidence that Trump’s positive words about Kim and North Korea’s economic prospects had signaled to China and Russia that it was okay to ease up on sanctions enforcement. Here again, the chances for a resolution seem to be fading.
In any other week, the moves by Iran and North Korea would have led the news. But Trump’s latest escalation in the trade war with China dominated instead. After the latest round of negotiations in Beijing in late April, American negotiators thought they were closing in on a deal. Then, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer received an edited draft of the agreement from his Chinese counterparts that appeared to backtrack on key issues. The following Sunday, just days before a high-level Chinese delegation was due to arrive in Washington for the next round of negotiations, Trump tweeted that he would raise tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese exports from 10 percent to 25 percent.
Despite rumors that they might not come, the Chinese negotiators arrived in Washington just hours before the tariffs went into effect Friday morning. The bad news is that they left after just a day and with no signs of a deal. The good news is that the two sides agreed to continue talking. In the meantime, China said it would take “necessary countermeasures,” while the Trump administration is taking steps to raise tariffs on the remaining $250 billion or so in imports from China.
After the talks ended, China’s chief negotiator, Liu He, said that an agreement would only be possible if the U.S. removes all tariffs, sets “targets for Chinese purchases of goods in line with real demand,” and accepts that the text of the trade agreement must be “‘balanced’ to ensure the ‘dignity’ of both nations.” The latter was apparently a reference to the U.S. demand that China codify its key commitments in legislation. The Chinese reportedly removed language to that effect from each of the seven chapters in the draft text sent to Lighthizer, thus triggering last week’s escalation. But Lighthizer views the leverage of continued U.S. tariffs and having China pass new laws as key to ensuring that the agreement is enforceable—all of which suggests an agreement is many months away.
The dilemma for Trump is that the longer the trade war drags on, the more leverage China will have. While the Chinese economy will unquestionably feel pain, President Xi Jinping does not have to run for reelection. Some observers are speculating that Trump’s aggressive posture is an indication that he now views looking tough as better for him politically than getting an agreement. But Trump also wants to be able to brag about a booming stock market and a strong economy in next year’s election campaign. If the trade war escalates again, it won’t just be farmers in the Midwest who feel the pain.
Signs that this dilemma is real were apparent in the official Federal Register announcement on the hiked tariffs on Chinese goods. While the increase took effect at 12:01 a.m. on May 10, an annex specified that the tariffs would only be collected on goods exported after that date. That means anything shipped prior to then can enter without the additional duties. In the case of maritime shipments, this delay could mean the end of the month, which gives negotiators a bit of time to reach an agreement before the tariffs take full effect.
A second provision aimed at reducing potential disruptions to the U.S. economy is the administration’s decision to create a process to consider requests for exclusion from the tariffs. While the business community had been calling for that since the tariffs were originally imposed last year, the administration had resisted until now. Unless the administration implements the exclusion process far more efficiently and flexibly than it has done with its tariffs on steel and aluminum, however, the relief will be minimal.
As with so much of Trump’s protectionism and his go-it-alone foreign policy, it is hard to see how any of this is “making America great again.” The government shutdown earlier this year showed that Trump’s get-tough act entails high costs with few or no discernible benefits. By taking that attitude into major foreign policy negotiations, including crises of his own creation, Trump is likely to make things worse, potentially much worse, before they get any better.
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