Janan Ganesh: “Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, is, to a degree that even his closest observers struggle to fathom, transactional. And not in a shrewd way. He inhabits a world before David Ricardo, if not before Adam Smith, in which wealth is understood as a cake that nations compete for a cut of. More for thee means less for me.”
“If the U.S. runs a current account deficit with China, ipso facto it is losing. If it foots a disproportionate share of the Nato bill, it is a sucker. Don’t bother reciting all that America gets in return. (If Vladimir Putin had collective defense arrangements on another continent, the alt-right would hail it as ‘strategic depth,’ not knock it as a burden.) To deal with Trump, first accept his zero-sum view of things as unshakeable.”
“This leaves Europe in a worse and better predicament than some think. Trump would be willing to sell it out for a buck. But he can be persuaded not to for a buck, too.”
