What Trump gets right

Hard power and protecting industries have a place in the toolbox.

It’s time for an unpopular post. While I think Donald Trump is a threat to our democracy, he’s also done a few things right, or at least that needed doing. We need to understand what makes him popular and where he’s having success.

I think Trump’s handling of the Middle East has lessons for both Democrats and Republicans. He’s had more success in the region than any recent president, starting with the Abraham Accords. He, or his foreign policy staff, helped bring about stability between Israel and its Arab neighbors. The agreements were signed during his first term and have lasted through the current situation despite significant stress.

Under his watch, Iran has been significantly weakened. Their proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Gaza have suffered massive defeats that will set them back for years. The Iranian nuclear program has taken a major hit and Israel has shown the Mullahs that their leaders are not safe anywhere. While Israel did much of the damage, Trump did not tie their hands.

Part of Trump’s success in the region reflects the worst of his instincts, even if they led to better outcomes. Trump is as transactional as the kings and emirs in the region. Like them, he has less respect for human life and little tolerance for dissent. They are trading in billions of dollars for the personal profit of a few. Peace is a side benefit because it keeps the transactions going.

The other reason for the success is that Trump has put more emphasis on punishment than negotiating with the Mullahs. While the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by Obama slowed their production of enriched Uranium, it didn’t seem to address the proxy groups that Iran controlled. Between Trump and Netanyahu, Iran has taken a serious beating on numerous fronts this year.

And of course, Trump negotiated the peace deal in Gaza. The actions I’ve already discussed probably played a role. Hamas has been seriously incapacitated and their state sponsor in Iran has less means of supporting them. We’ll see how it plays out, bur a lot Israelis are crediting Trump for the deal.

The Middle East has been in some sort of turmoil for decades, so we don’t really know what the long-term impact of Trump’s actions will be. That said, Trump offers some lessons. The main one is that hard power is necessary to strengthen negotiations, but it doesn’t mean invading countries. Iran is back on its heels with few US troops on the ground.

Trump’s protectionists instincts have also produced some positive results even if he’s misused tariffs. Free market ideologues created much of the resentment that fueled Trumpism. The free trade agreements of the 1990s hollowed out manufacturing communities throughout the Midwest and South. The government offered little help to once-thriving towns that suddenly ended up with boarded up shops, high unemployment, and little hope for the future.

While we might not be able to put the genie back in bottle, we can make efforts to mitigate the impacts of trade agreements and make sure that they are fair as well as free. The free-marketeers won the arguments for thirty years, rationalizing that access to cheap goods were more important than the well-being of small towns and working class families. We’ve been out of balance for years and it’s time to try something different to give people a sense of hope.

Trump’s domestic actions largely negate his positive moves. Eroding democracy, politicizing the Justice Department, sending troops into cities, rounding up people in raids, building concentration camps, and calling political opponents “evil” are existential threats to the American experiment. Still, Trump was elected because people had already lost faith in many of our institutions and they believed that we had lost our standing in the world. Even as we oppose his authoritarian moves, we need to recognize what led to his rise and what he’s doing to keep people behind him.