Business News – Nov 12, 2024

Smile, Flatter and Barter: How the World Is Prepping for Trump Part II

New York Times. Nov 9, 2024.

When Prime Minister Keir Starmer met Donald J. Trump at Trump Tower for dinner on Sept. 26, it was part of a British charm offensive to nurture a relationship between a left-wing leader and a right-wing potential president. So when Mr. Trump turned to Mr. Starmer before parting and told him, “We are friends,” according to a person involved in the evening, it did not go unnoticed.

Whether they stay friends is anybody’s guess.

For months leading up to Mr. Trump’s political comeback — and in the heady days since his victory was confirmed — foreign leaders have rushed, once again, to ingratiate themselves with him. Their emissaries have cultivated people in Mr. Trump’s orbit or with think tanks expected to be influential in setting policies for a second Trump administration.

Some leaders, like President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, are crafting their pitches to appeal to Mr. Trump’s transactional nature; others, like Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, have deployed teams of officials to the United States to visit dozens of Republican leaders in the hope that they can moderate Mr. Trump’s most radical instincts on imposing tariffs.

History suggests that many of these bridge-building efforts will fail. By the end of his first term, Mr. Trump had soured on several leaders with whom he started off on good terms. His protectionist trade policy and aversion to alliances — coupled with a mercurial personality — fueled clashes that overrode the rapport that the leaders had labored to cultivate.

“There were two misapprehensions about Trump,” Malcolm Turnbull, a former prime minister of Australia, said in an interview. “The first was, he would be different in office than he was on the campaign trail. The second was, the best way to deal with him was to suck up to him.”

In January 2017, Mr. Turnbull had a notoriously hostile phone call with Mr. Trump over whether the United States would honor an Obama-era deal to accept 1,250 refugees, which Mr. Trump opposed (the U.S. did end up taking them). Mr. Turnbull said he later found other common ground with Mr. Trump, even talking him out of imposing tariffs on some Australian exports.

The difference this time, Mr. Turnbull said, is that “everybody knows exactly what they’re going to get. He’s highly transactional. You’ve got to be able to demonstrate that a particular course of action is in his interest.”

Well before the election, leaders began anticipating a Trump victory by seeking him out. Mr. Zelensky met him in New York the same week as Mr. Starmer. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel traveled to Mr. Trump’s Palm Beach estate, Mar-a-Lago, in July, as did Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary.

A populist whose autocratic style is a model for some in Mr. Trump’s MAGA movement, Mr. Orban has come, perhaps, the closest to cracking the code with Mr. Trump. The two meet and speak regularly by phone; they heap praise on each other in what has become a mutual admiration society.

Mr. Orban, Mr. Trump has said, is a “very great leader, a very strong man,” whom some don’t like only “because he’s too strong.” Mr. Orban, for his part, has praised Mr. Trump as the only hope for peace in Ukraine and for the defeat of “woke globalists.”

How to Convince Trump

Convincing Mr. Trump that Ukraine’s priorities are in his own interest lies at the heart of Mr. Zelensky’s lobbying strategy. Mr. Trump’s skepticism about military support for Ukraine against Russia is well known: He claims he could end the war in a day, perhaps even before taking office, though he has not said how. Analysts fear he will force Mr. Zelensky into a peace settlement with President Vladimir V. Putin that would entrench Russia’s territorial gains in Ukraine.

At their meeting in New York, Mr. Zelensky made the case that defending Ukraine is in the economic interests of the United States. That is