Annual speeches often cover a president’s view of the world, as well as the domestic landscape. Diplomacy is not a word I’d really use in relation to Trump, but if I were to describe his way of navigating international affairs, I might use the term “capital diplomacy.”
I was struck, for example, by the way in which Trump has pushed BlackRock to buy two major ports on the Panama Canal as a way of mitigating Chinese influence in the vital waterway.
It’s also interesting that American investors have been backing a Russian relaunch of the ill fated Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which, if successful, would give the US quite a bit of leverage over European petro-politics.
This of course follows on from Trump’s attempts to do a land grab of Ukrainian mineral resources, and his proposals to buy Greenland and turn Gaza into a theme park.
Commerce is all in Trumpworld. I stand by the first column I wrote after he took office, “America Inc.’s New CEO”.
2025-03-05 02:40:00
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