Trump Plunges Ahead With America-First, Nationalist Approach. Actions on immigration, trade and U.S. military presence in Syria signal a new phase in presidency.
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No more. Instead, Washington has moved into the period of Trump Unbound.
Never was that more clear than on Tuesday, when Mr. Trump made three startling pronouncements that, taken together, almost perfectly encapsulate the way he now has set out to implement his nationalist, America-first agenda in more pure form.
The president declared that he wants to bring U.S. troops home from Syria, a step that would mark a step back from the commitment to stabilize the wider region begun by fellow Republican George W. Bush after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
At the same time, he said he wanted to use U.S. troops to guard the U.S. border with Mexico, a stark proposal for enforcing his hard-nosed immigration policies. Such a move would represent the logical and literal follow-through on a complaint he made during his presidential campaign; His predecessors in the Oval Office—Republican and Democratic alike—had spent more resources helping other nations defend their borders than helping America defend its own.
Finally, at day’s end, the administration detailed $50 billion worth of Chinese goods on which it plans to slap a 25% tariff unless Beijing makes changes in its trade and investment policies. That move ultimately may turn out to be more bargaining tool than long-term policy change, but for now it and others like it are real enough to have rattled traditional free-trade Republicans and shaken financial markets.
Nor are those three moves the only signs of this new phase in the Trump presidency. A president who just weeks ago seemed eager to make a deal extending the legal status of young immigrants brought to the U.S. as children—something mainstream politicians of both parties wanted as well—now says the idea of such a deal for Dreamers is dead.
And he has decided, apparently quite on his own, that he will have personal meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Many in the foreign-policy establishment, and some within his own administration, think those plans are unwise, perhaps even dangerous, because the meetings will seem to reward Mr. Putin’s thuggish behavior and legitimize Mr. Kim’s brutal regime.
But Mr. Trump appears convinced of his own ability to use personal powers of persuasion to steer others in his direction.
On all these fronts, Mr. Trump is acting after having shaken off shackles placed on him in his first year in office. Senior advisers who attempted to nudge him toward more conventional policies—economic adviser Gary Cohn, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, national security adviser H.R. McMaster, White House staff secretary Rob Porter —all are gone. Outside friends and informal advisers, more likely to encourage the president in his instincts than to pull him away from them, are filling the void.
Meanwhile, the chances that Congress, even under Republican control, can get much more done this year are steadily declining, leaving Mr. Trump less reason to worry about staying in sync with establishment GOP leaders on Capitol Hill.
Taken together, those forces from last year pushed Mr. Trump toward a mainstream Republican agenda: Kill Obamacare; pass tax cuts; push deregulation and keep troops engaged in the usual hot spots abroad, all the while trimming his impulses on trade and immigration.
Now, though, the changes in the surrounding landscape “leave an open slate for the president,” says Ron Bonjean, a former top adviser to Republicans in Congress and in the George W. Bush administration. “He’s been shaking up Washington for well over a year, but now he’s literally delivering on promises he made and a philosophy that he had espoused through the 2016 election, the America-first policy.”
Some constraints remain on Mr. Trump, of course. Military leaders will try to persuade him not to withdraw the relatively small number of American troops that have been helping friendly militias in Syria. There, they continue to battle what remains of Islamic State, and, in the process, serve as a counterweight to growing Russian and Iranian influence in Syria.
At the same time, a slide in the stock market—the health of which Mr. Trump boasted about regularly in his first year—could yet force him to trim his sails on the trade front. Similarly, Republican lawmakers struggling to maintain control of Congress in this year’s midterm elections will return to Washington next week from a holiday break and likely will seek to temper Mr. Trump’s threats to impose new trade restrictions on China. Already, Trump voters in red states in middle America are growing uneasy about retaliatory moves China has taken against U.S. farm exports.
Still, Mr. Bonjean notes, there is another indicator Mr. Trump is likely to watch just as carefully: His job approval ratings have inched up in recent days, and he “is going to make a connection between his ramping up of America-first policies and his standing in the polls.”
Write to Gerald F. Seib at jerry.seib@wsj.com
Appeared in the April 4, 2018, print edition as 'Unrestrained, Trump Stresses Nationalism.'
