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Whoever is watching closely the Trump Administration's strategy to reshape global trade could reasonably have sometimes thought he did not have a strategy for re-doing global business.
But that has changed in the last few weeks. A more coherent approach is starting to emerge, even if it does not guarantee success.
The strategy that has been adopted pretty much looks like this: the president has defeated his traditional allies, including Canada, Mexico, the European Union, Japan and South Korea. He attacked them publicly, imposed tariffs on their steels and aluminum, and threatened to tax their cars. But basically, it was to soften them to obtain moderate concessions favorable to US interests.
This has now been achieved with a trade agreement with South Korea at the end of September and a new Nafta, which will now be called U.S.M.C.A. (for the United States-Mexico-Canada agreement), signed last weekend.
Now that the administration has shown that it could come to these agreements, similar agreements with Europe and Japan should follow. Once the revised agreements are concluded with these allies in place, the administration will likely seek a concerted effort on their part to isolate China and impose major changes to China's trade and business practices.
In other words, the ultimate goal is to restore economic relations between China and the rest of the world. This can take time and cause pain in the meantime. But the idea is that it is a multi-step process to gain more weight to force China to allow US companies to sell their products and operate freely without their technology being stolen. And that strengthens the United States in a geopolitical rivalry with China that is becoming increasingly tense, as Vice President Pence explained. in a speech last week.
A crucial piece of evidence of this strategy: a provision of the new North American agreement that will hardly prevent Mexico or Canada from negotiating a trade agreement with a "non-market" economy such as China without risking harming their privileged access to states -United. market.
Larry Kudlow, the economic adviser to the White House, Thursday exposed this strategy to the Economic Club of Washington. "China is first and foremost," he said at one point.
"There are a lot of unfair trade practices, and the main culprit is China," he said. The administration was able to finalize the new North American agreement, he said, with "a combination of pressure and negotiations".
"We are still talking to the European Union, we are still talking in Japan, and we are moving to what I have termed a commercial coalition eager to confront China," Kudlow said. (He did not note that he had borrowed a term also used to refer to the allies who participated in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which President Trump described as a catastrophe.)
Analysts feel that the administration is pursuing a single coherent strategy compared to the beginning of the year. At this point, at least from the outside, the administration seemed to change its approach every week and sometimes every day. It often seems that there has been a series of improvised movements, with different senior officials favoring different approaches.
The steel and aluminum tariffs were to apply to the steel and aluminum all imports, then close allies were exempted, until two months later, when they were not.
There appeared to be an agreement to increase Chinese imports of US agricultural and energy products and achieve a commercial peace – which collapsed a few days later as President Trump changed course and demanded deeper changes. of the Chinese economy and business practices.
Now, with the new North American deal, it has become easier to see how the different elements of Trump's trade are harmonizing. The "non-market" provision seems designed to give the United States a veto over any agreement Canada or Mexico may seek with China.
But just because the administration's global trade strategy is more coherent than in the past does not mean it will work. And there are still many reasons for skepticism.
"I think we can see a strategy, but that does not mean that it is a good strategy," said Mary E. Lovely, professor at Syracuse University and a member of the University of Syracuse. Peterson Institute of International Economics. "They will use these bilateral agreements with powerful countries to line up behind the US on China. But when we get there, what's the next step? I do not know what is the finale. "
Some facts about the Trump administration The list of demands in negotiations with the Chinese seems unlikely to be satisfied, as it would force China to abandon its entire strategy of modernizing its economy.
For example, China is being asked to suspend subsidies for its "Made in China 2025" program aimed ating Its companies have a foothold in aeronautics, robotics and other advanced manufacturing fields.
Even if efforts to isolate China succeed, the result could be a simple global trading system with orbits of countries with strong ties to the United States and one with China, with little overlap.
A crucial question is whether the administration's strategy of hitting allies with attacks, threats and tariffs can give not only revised trade agreements, but also the confidence to engage in a concerted campaign against terrorism. China.
Ms. Lovely jokes that it would really be the "Coalition of Stressed People" rather than Mr. Kudlow's "Coalition of Volunteers".
The scars and bruises of this year's negotiations could persist, The Trump administration was not ready to engage in multilateral negotiations with many parties at once.
The new North American deal, a case study of such reluctance, shares many elements with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, negotiated by the Obama administration and abandoned by the Trump administration early in the 1990s. 2017.
This agreement was to provide a strategic counterbalance to China's economic power in Pacific Rim countries.
But rather than reopen T.P.P., the Trump administration has chosen the path of separate agreements with each country. The bet is that the United States will have greater bargaining power in a series of bilateral agreements with allies than in a large multi-country agreement – even though many details of the agreements end up resembling each other, as was the case with the new American agreement.
The risk of this approach is that when the United States concludes each agreement separately, it can be difficult to turn around and create any kind of unified pressure against China.
"Together, you must know that a partner is reliable and that if he tells you anything, he will stick to that," said Phil Levy, senior Chicago Council on Global Affairs . "This administration has been anything but reliable in terms of trade policy."
Nevertheless, there are some obvious points that were not clear at the beginning of the summer.
The Trump administration is not only trying to blow things up; as long as the negotiators can claim victory for American interests, there are agreements to be negotiated for the allies. And as unpleasant as the commercial skirmishes with Europe, Canada or Japan, they are really a warm up for a trade war with China.
