A recent NYT article highlighted the strategies Donald Trump used to become and remain successful in the business world. To sum up the article, Trump made a lot of money on losing businesses by developing sweetheart deals to sell said businesses and avoid the debt for those businesses and their subsequent failure. This is in essence his plan for the U.S. Economy. Any basic analysis of the Trump budget strategy shows that he intends to put the responsibility of American debt on the countries we help support around the globe. He, perhaps falsely, plans to build a wall across the Mexican border and make the Mexican people pay for it. He expects Japan and many other countries to pay for the assistance we give them. This is a dangerous strategy beyond the scale of all the other rhetoric he’s created. The only reason people aren’t saying more about that is because it is so absurd that the republican led congress is completely ignoring it as a possibility.
Our country trades on reputation, presumed wealth, and military might. Our reputation is tied intrinsically with our presumed wealth. We give away a lot of money. We assist nations all over the world in an effort to curry political favor. We set up trade deals primarily designed to help them on the front end and build favor on the back end.
Trump wants to make America great again by making America a bully that takes advantage of international law to bully other countries and demand ridiculous arrangements that benefit America and screw the rest of the world. All that we’ve built with the world will begin to dissolve into resentment and realignment towards rising countries who are willing to offer support (see: China) eventually putting us in a position where we are the bad guy, and that can never end well.