While President Donald Trump has spent his second term trying to manipulate Canada into accepting his concessions, a recent turn of events indicates that his schemes have not only failed but backfired. This is according to Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, who on Friday explained how Trump’s attempt at Machiavellian rule has achieved the opposite of what he intended.
“On Wednesday,” writes Krugman, “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 Minister, 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.”
Krugman argues that while in the past, the EU was willing to make questionable deals with Trump, at this point, Europe has decided to stop fearing him. And now “Canada’s defiance is even more remarkable,” as “Canada’s economy is extremely dependent on the United States both as an export market and as a supplier.” The country has much to lose and many problems to overcome by pivoting from the U.S. to Europe, but Carney and other world leaders have decided that it’s better than 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,” writes Krumgan. “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.” Here he quotes Machiavelli, who wrote, “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.”
In Krugman’s estimation, “Trump isn’t doing well on the ‘avoiding hatred’ front. Pew’s survey of international views of the United States shows 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 two and a half times the number who strongly approve.” So while plenty of people hate Trump, according to Krugman, they no longer fear him.
Krugman largely attributes this to Trump’s “debacle in Iran,” which has proven the limits of American military and diplomatic might. At the same time, while Trump issues many economic threats, the world has come to realize that the U.S. too would suffer from an all-out trade war. What’s more, world leaders are looking at midterm polls and see that Trump is about to have his efforts checked by a Democratic House and maybe even Senate.
In light of all this, globally, Krugman concludes, “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.”