Speaking at the 2018 Conservative Political Action Conference in Oxon Hill, Maryland, on Friday, President Donald Trump announced a policy idea that at a normal time, from a normal president, would have dramatically moved financial markets. But of course, nothing of the sort happened.
He said that unless he can get Mexico and Canada to agree to sweeping changes to the North American Free Trade Agreement that would eliminate the US-Mexico bilateral trade deficit, he “will terminate the deal and we’ll start over again.”
Specific companies that depend on the ability to easily import goods from Mexico to the United States should have seen their share prices plummet while firms that compete with Mexican imports should have seen prices soar. Instead, it was a blah day on financial markets, with the Dow up slightly and no particularly surprising moves from individual companies.
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Perhaps the most telling moment of the entire speech came at the end, when Trump offered a desultory announcement of new sanctions on North Korea: ...
Trump appears unable to describe either the actual contents of the new sanctions or what policy goals the sanctions are intended to advance. He doesn’t even appear to be particularly supportive of the new policy, just saying blandly that “hopefully something positive can happen.” ...
Foreign policy is where the president’s discretionary authority is at its maximum. Yet it’s clear on that this crucial issue — as on everything else — Trump is essentially a peripheral player in the Trump administration and even in the Trump White House.
Somebody decided on this new policy, and they presumably did it for some reason, but Trump neither knows nor cares. I, too, hope something positive can happen. But if a time comes when the United States needs strong leadership from the Oval Office, we’re not going to get it.
