That is an ominous policy mix that usually leads to an economic slowdown and recessions of unknown amplitude and duration.
But let`s not rain on Trump`s work anniversary party. The Chinese, the Europeans and the Japanese will do that. They have him stuck — on his watch — with a whopping $564 billion trade deficit in the first 11 months of last year. That`s a 6 percent increase from the same period of 2016, and 76 percent of America`s total trade gap.
That should be hard to swallow for someone who ran for office on the pledge of stopping, and reversing, America`s huge and systematic hemorrhage on external accounts, and its steadily deteriorating net foreign debt — $8 trillion at the last count.
That, however, is only part of the problem. In a prelude to Trump`s participation at that European jamboree, America`s CEO is being mocked as a man starting trade wars and preventing the "healing of a fractured world" — whatever that means.
He is also being lectured on taking the huge trade deficits with equanimity because it`s all America`s fault: Just a matter of national account imbalances owing to the large savings-investment gap. They want to snow him with sophistry entirely analogous to the brutal retort of a German minister telling Trump to "build better cars" if he wanted Chevys on German roads.
Should American taxpayers be footing the bill for that kind of nonsense while the government is being shut down and hundreds of thousands of public servants are put on unpaid leaves? After all, that trip would cost quite a bit more than a golfing weekend in New Jersey or Florida.
Both Democrats and Trump-friendly media would love that trip to Europe: a dream political fodder in the run-up to the "do-or-die" mid-term Congressional elections.
What about the issues of war and peace? Here is a short list: The military standoff on the Korean Peninsula, ongoing war hostilities in Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Ukraine, or Iran`s nuclear deal and that country`s increasingly assertive role in the Middle East, etc.
Those are the acute security problems that can be solved only if an agreement could be found among the U., China and Russia. But that`s not done in Alpine ski resorts. The proper formats for that are state visits, or summits on the sidelines of official multilateral events, as was the case during last year`s G-20 and APEC meetings. That`s where Trump held discussions with the Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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