Donald Trump: moving from populist to leader

Illustration: Sturt Krygsman

Donald Trump now takes office pledging to be a transforming President and facing a historic challenge — the transition from a populist agent of disruption to a governing chief executive.

The backdrop is unpredictable contradiction — a divided and partisan America, a Republican-dominated congress, denunciation of the progressive class, a mood of global apprehension, ­optimism from the US investment community but widespread alarm about Trump’s character, plans and judgment.

His performance as president-elect, a bizarre and unprecedented phase of politics, gave the lie to ­notions that Trump would succumb to orthodoxy. Indeed, his traits as a populist, nationalist, ­celebrity, businessman, bully and dealmaker only seem to be ­accentuated.

Are the qualities that saw Trump defy the conventional wisdom and win the election the same qualities that will see him succeed as President and defy his critics yet again? This is the question of the age.

Trump was brilliant in 2016 in seizing control of the Republican Party and channelling public rage against power elites. Now he must govern, an entirely different task.

As President, he becomes The Man. He has the power. He sits in the Oval Office. He is Mr Elite who, on the evidence, is not too keen to get down and dirty with the great US public. His preferred weapons, populism and disruption, are not enough for a governing president.

Trump, of course, will still play the blame game. He inherits a rich reservoir of blame to be ­exploited courtesy of the failed US political establishment over the past 20 years — from Barack Obama’s soft progressivism and “leadership from behind” to the blind arrogance of the Republican Party ­relying on low-income white male voters for whom it rarely delivered.

But from this point on, Trump can only be judged by his governing decisions, not the flaws of his predecessors. He needs to be treated on merit, though there is little hope of this. The furnace of American cultural and political polarisation will just get hotter as his well-heeled critics denounce from the start his legitimacy as President and his legions of the alienated provide a drumbeat of loyalty.

This is a potentially dangerous era for America. Can Trump put together a semi-credible opening chapter to his presidency? The omens are mixed but hardly favourable. His antics during the transition have been unconventional at best and foolish at worst. The polls are bad. A series of polls show his approval rating about 40 per cent, extremely poor at ­inauguration, the worst for several decades for a new president.

Isolated in Trump Tower, he rarely leaves his fortress, sends edits to the world by tweet, attacks his critics, engages in a war of words with the US intelligence community, has his cabinet ­appointees contradicting each other, and creates the fear of an ­incoherent and unpredictable ­administration. The deeper fear is discussed in head-of-government offices around the world: is Trump as US President a risk to the world?

Like most populists, Trump comes with an aggressive pro-growth economic agenda. It should deliver him hefty investment and business backing.

The US stockmarket has been enthusiastic, recording a rally ­between his election and inauguration. The strong Republican position in congress gives Trump the chance to become an “action president”, extinguish much of Obama’s regulatory agenda, cut back climate change-driven ­energy restrictions, deliver much of his pledge to slash corporate taxes to 15 per cent, engineer more infrastructure projects and imple­ment his “repeal and replace” plan for Obamacare.

Such outcomes, if implemented and sold effectively, could generate a dramatic sense of psy­cho­logical and economic change.

The two keys to Trump’s domestic ­success are, first, showing he can break through in a US political system long stalemated and, second, his projection as a prosperity agent. Yet the difficulties are huge: ­expectations are high, ­revival in the rust-belt regions is daunting and reigniting the ­expired manufacturing base constitutes a structural issue that ­almost defies solution.

Yet this leads directly to ­another Trumpian manifestation — the President as intimidator and bully of corporate America. The Washington Post suggested a parallel with president Teddy Roosevelt from the early 1900s, given Roosevelt’s penchant to regulate, lecture and control business in the public interest to keep leftist politics at bay. Companies like Walmart and General Motors have unveiled more jobs (probably in the pipeline anyway) but business is terrified of Trump turning on their companies. “They’re scared to death,” the Post quoted Bill Clinton’s former commerce secretary, William Daley, as saying.

Again, Trump tantalises with a de facto deal: keep your jobs in the US and you avoid border tax ­retaliation and enjoy our huge company tax cut. For Trump the obsessive dealmaker, the free market is an abstraction leading only to grief.

And this penetrates to another Trumpian risk — that he is bent upon a protection-first policy for the US that will hurt the world. Impatient to succeed, the fear is that Trump will act exactly as he has promised: slap duties on China’s imports, risk a form of US-China trade war, run a lower US dollar campaign to help the long-suffering Trump voters in Middle America who are awaiting their ­income gains, and seek to intimidate the Federal Reserve.

This fear penetrates to the core of the argument against Trump — a proposition certain to be proved or disproved. His central pledge is to “make America great again” but Trump doesn’t seem to believe in the core ideas and policies that made America so great in the first place, in that post-World War II era: free trade, immigration, global responsibility, an alliance culture, a moral framework, a measured approach to global power and leadership, loyalty to friends and a willingness to sacrifice to resist ­enemies.

Time will tell but Trump’s rhetoric suggests a decisive break from US policies that have underwritten much of the stability and prosperity of the postwar world. He has given vent to a populism not just wide and deep enough to bring him to the White House but implying a new epoch in which America becomes an introspective nation fixated on its own problems, traumas, divisions and ­inequalities, a direction already taken by the Obama presidency.

The question thus becomes: what is Trump’s core character and belief? Former World Bank president and senior official in past Republican administrations, Bob Zoellick, says Trump is best grasped as an independent, not a party partisan, Republican or Democrat. By stealing the Republican nomination, Zoellick argues, Trump can operate as an independent “not bound by party ideologies or past positions”. For enduring loyalty he will look to family, blood ties and tribal brothers. Anyone else is expendable and will be thrown on the trash heap.

Most analysts highlight two traits: Trump is a creation of American celebrity culture and real-estate high-rolling deals. He is a fusion of the two: a leader ­defined by transaction, not faiths. What counts is doing the deal, not being consistent; friends and ­enemies are interchangeable ­depending on the issue. This might work in business but its application to countries is frightening and ­irresponsible.

Insulting or praising foreign leaders is part of the endless quest for personal advantage in negotiation: witness Trump’s statement he will begin by “trusting both” Angela Merkel and Vladimir Putin, thereby putting the leader of a great democracy and US ally on equal footing with the Russian dictator.

This is typical Trump: ahistorical, agnostic — and amoral too? Again, we shall have to wait. Yet the Trumpian ethos is apparent: any option is on the table, any ­reversal of position is possible. Why? Perhaps because few ­principles are at stake. Is this Trump’s view of politics and the presidency?

This may be unfair to him. We shall see. But Trump cannot complain because his astonishing ­behaviour during the transition guarantees that rational men and women in positions of responsibility must have such doubts and fears. Consider Trump’s perfor­mance. Just a week ago he said the one-China policy was “negotiable”, hinting at reviewing a policy decades old and picking the only policy for China that is not negotiable. His nominee for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, ­indirectly raised the possibility of conflict with China. A Chinese spokeswoman replied coolly that “not everything in the world can be bargained or traded off”.

Trump continues to openly favour Putin, repeatedly hinting at the prospect of deals with Russia. He alarms eastern Europe with new declarations that NATO is “obsolete”, thereby contradicting the views of his nominee for ­defence secretary, retired general James Mattis.

He seems to enjoy mocking Merkel, the most pivotal politician in Europe, and British PM Theresa May, given his flirtation with her rival, the former leader of the pro-Brexit UK Independence Party, Nigel Farage. He plays games with May, saying a US-Britain trade deal would be “good for both sides”, aware of Britain’s vulnerability in Brexit negotiations.

He encourages the further break-up of the European Union, predicts that other nations will leave, undermines Merkel by depic­ting the EU as German-dominated and draws a parallel between his own backers and anti-EU populist agitation.

Europe will be better off if its 60 year project collapses? Who wants this? Who says? Putin, of course, who would have his wildest dreams granted.

What is the purpose in such provocations? Where is the logic or intelligence or strategy? Trump’s apologists seem to pretend he is an all-cunning fusion of Metternich and Sun Tzu. In truth, nobody can fathom his game. Of course, anti-elitist voters who hate all politicians love Trump even more and think this is great stuff.

The fear is that in confusing others, Trump is actually confusing himself, lost somewhere in the transition between a campaigning populist repudiating established norms and a President who has the task of managing a dangerous world. Apologetic comparisons with Ronald Reagan seem bizarre since Reagan had a global strategy, a deep moral sense and a true ­appreciation of friends and allies.

At the same time, Trump’s protectionism could weaken further the global trade system and create serial opportunities for his opponents, notably China’s President Xi Jinping. In a ludicrous juxtaposition, Xi has just been in Davos pandering to globalisation’s elite, the audience that used to swoon over Bill Clinton, casting China as a champion of economic liberalism. He said globalisation was not to blame for the world’s problems, supported trade and technological liberalisation, and did a knife job on Trump’s nationalistic populists.

Is this hypocrisy writ large? Of course. Is it clever? Of course. Will it work? Maybe, depending on the size of the vacuum Trump creates if he reverses American liberalism and punts on a protectionist option with more controls and ­import duties. That will diminish US influence in the world. Have no doubt about the question China wants to put: who do you trust more, Xi or Trump?

Over the past two years, Xi completely outfoxed Obama over China’s build-up in the South China Sea. The recent shared declarations from the leaders of Japan and Australia, Shinzo Abe and Malcolm Turnbull, highlight the depth of their strategic concerns — they affirmed their pivotal alliances with the US, their bilateral ties and the need for the Trans-­Pacific Partnership trade deal.

Trump has killed off the TPP. He remains unpredictable on the US alliance system in Asia. It is ­extremely doubtful if he has any grasp of the extent of China’s diplomatic progress — it has dri­ven a political wedge through a weak collection of Southeast Asian nations. Unless Trump can display astute regional diplomacy along with credible strategic resolution then momentum in the region will continue to favour China.

Turnbull aspires to work effectively with Trump. The question, however, is the nature of Trump’s Asian policy and whether it assists or undermines Australia’s national interest. What changes does Trump, as a transformational leader, envisage for the Asia-­Pacific? Will he trigger trade disruption or an ill-considered show­down with China, or mismanage the present alliance system? ­Nobody knows.

Trump’s presidency will become a significant event for Australia. His impact on this country is already tangible and will only ­intensify. Trump is a dangerous catalyst for the fragmentation of conservative politics in Australia, for resurgent protectionist policies, and he is certain to alter the strategic balance in the region in ways that defy prediction.