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Trump and the Sources of U.S. Power
President Donald Trump has tried both to impose the United States on the world and to distance the country from it. He began his second term by brandishing American hard power, threatening Denmark over the control of Greenland, and suggesting he would take back the Panama Canal. He successfully wielded threats of punitive tariffs to coerce Canada, Colombia, and Mexico on immigration issues. He withdrew from the Paris climate accords and the World Health Organization. In April, he sent global markets into chaos by announcing sweeping tariffs on countries all over the world. He changed tack not long after, withdrawing most of the additional tariffs, although continuing to press a trade war with China-the central front in his current offensive against Washington's main rival.
In doing all this, Trump can act from a position of strength. His attempts to use tariffs to pressure U.S. trade partners suggest that he believes that contemporary patterns of interdependence enhance U.S. power. Other countries rely on the buying power of the enormous American market and on the certainties of American military might. These advantages give Washington the leeway to strong-arm its partners. His positions are consistent with an argument we made almost 50 years ago: that asymmetric interdependence confers an advantage on the less dependent actor in a relationship. Trump laments the United States' significant trade deficit with China, but he also seems to understand that this imbalance gives Washington tremendous leverage over Beijing.
Even as Trump has correctly identified the way in which the United States is strong, he is using that strength in fundamentally counterproductive ways. By assailing interdependence, he undercuts the very foundation of American power. The power associated with trade is hard power, based on material capabilities. But over the past 80 years, the United States has accumulated soft power, based on attraction rather than coercion or the imposition of costs. Wise American policy would maintain, rather than disrupt, patterns of interdependence that strengthen American power, both the hard power derived from trade relationships and the soft power of attraction. The continuation of Trump's current foreign policy would weaken the United States and accelerate the erosion of the international order that since World War II has served...