0:02

Welcome to the President's Inbox. I'm

0:04

Jim Lindsay, the Marion David Boys

0:07

Distinguished Senior Fellow in U .S.

0:09

Foreign Policy at the Council on

0:11

Foreign Relations. Tomorrow marks

0:13

100 days since President Donald Trump

0:15

took office. Certainly has been

0:17

a busy 14 weeks. Because so

0:19

much has happened, we decided

0:21

to ask our listeners what questions

0:23

they had on the Trump

0:25

administration's foreign policy. To help me

0:27

answer them, I recruited my

0:29

good friends and CFR colleagues, Matias

0:31

Matias and Carla Ann Robbins. Matias

0:34

is a senior fellow for

0:36

Europe at the Council and the

0:38

Dean, Atchison Associate Professor of

0:40

International Political Economy at Johns Hopkins

0:42

University's School of Advanced international

0:44

studies. Carla is a senior fellow

0:46

at the council and faculty

0:48

director and professor at Baruch College's

0:50

Mark School of Public and

0:52

International Affairs. She was formerly the

0:54

deputy editorial page editor at

0:56

the New York Times and before

0:58

that the chief diplomatic correspondent

1:00

at the Wall Street Journal. Matthias

1:02

and Carla, thank you for joining me

1:04

on the president's inbox. Thanks for having

1:06

us Jim. Yep, great to be

1:08

back. As

1:17

I mentioned in the intro,

1:19

Carla and Matias, we asked

1:21

followers of CFR .org on Instagram

1:23

what questions they had about

1:25

Donald Trump's first 100 days.

1:27

We got a ton of

1:29

great suggestions. I want to

1:31

go through as many as I can

1:33

in the time that we have. But

1:36

first, like to start with

1:38

your overall assessment of Donald

1:40

Trump's first 100 days, what

1:42

stands out about Trump 2

1:45

.0 to you, Carla. You

1:47

know, we all wrote before

1:49

he came back that he

1:51

had learned a lot from

1:53

the first term and mainly

1:55

that he wasn't going to be constrained. He

1:57

wasn't going to be constrained by the

1:59

adults in the room. And I just

2:01

don't think as many times as

2:03

I wrote it and as many

2:06

times as I said it, I

2:08

just didn't think that it was

2:10

going to be this intense. Every

2:12

single place you look starting

2:14

from the people that he

2:17

chose for his cabinet to

2:19

the plans to slash the

2:21

State Department budget to. the

2:24

firing of the chairman of

2:26

the joint chiefs to all

2:28

the top military lawyers to

2:30

the talk potentially of closing

2:32

the Africa Bureau at the

2:34

State Department to shutting down

2:36

AID, the voice of America.

2:39

I mean, this is disruption

2:41

on steroids and it

2:43

is partly utter chaos and

2:45

partly with huge intent. It

2:48

is. far, far more intense than

2:50

I ever could have expected. Yeah,

2:53

I wrote a lot about how Trump's

2:55

foreign policy would be disruptive, but it's

2:57

one thing to write about it. And

2:59

I think quite another thing to actually

3:01

see it in practice. Matthias,

3:03

what's your reaction? Yeah, I'd agree

3:05

with the chaos and the disruption,

3:07

right? So I think we can

3:09

all agree that Donald Trump promised

3:11

a lot of things during the

3:13

campaign. And I think we also

3:15

can all agree now that clearly

3:18

campaigning comes easier for Donald

3:20

Trump than governing and making

3:22

policy. That said, the first

3:25

few weeks we saw this

3:27

sort of frenetic activity from

3:29

deportations and dealing with illegal

3:31

migrants to very quickly came

3:33

the trade tariffs that were

3:35

stacked and gotten amplified. But

3:38

if you actually look at

3:40

the end of a hundred days,

3:43

I mean the Conclusion, you have to come

3:45

to, he actually doesn't have that many

3:47

results to show for, right? I mean, he's

3:49

already paused much of his tariffs. He's

3:51

even hinting vis -a -vis China, where he wasn't

3:53

going to pause them, where he was

3:55

going to play hardball, that he won't do

3:57

that. It's also clear

3:59

that Elon Musk's time at Doge,

4:01

the department of government, so -called

4:03

department of government efficiency, is

4:05

coming to a rather premature end,

4:08

right, well before the July

4:10

4, 2026 date they had set

4:12

for themselves. And even

4:14

when it comes to Jerome Powell, the

4:16

chairman of the Federal Reserve, who he

4:18

was going to fire because he doesn't

4:20

want to lower interest rates, he

4:22

now can stay. So I

4:25

feel like in just the last

4:27

few weeks of April, it

4:29

was becoming clear that he does

4:31

face real constraints, not as

4:33

many of us thought from his

4:36

personnel, but from things like

4:38

the bond market and from the

4:40

risk of empty shelves in

4:42

Target and Walmart. Unfortunately, the

4:44

bond market doesn't care about

4:46

what happens when the United States

4:48

slashes all funding for malaria. And

4:51

the bond market doesn't care

4:53

when all money for AID

4:55

disappears and when children are

4:57

starving in Sudan. I

4:59

mean, remarkable impact that we're already

5:02

seeing on the world's poor and

5:04

the world's ill and on public

5:06

health funding and on development aid.

5:08

You know, these are not. As much

5:11

as Elon Musk was referring to

5:13

this as waste, fraud, and abuse, we're

5:15

seeing the impacts almost overnight because

5:17

we were not only the main funders,

5:19

we were the overwhelming funders of

5:21

these things which really mean the difference

5:23

between life and death. And it

5:25

is a remarkable thing, even, and I

5:27

blame my colleagues in the press

5:29

that we write one story about it

5:32

and we move on. And that,

5:34

too, is a phenomenon in the first

5:36

100 days. There's so much chaos

5:38

out there that it's really hard to

5:40

figure out which way to look.

5:42

Absolutely right that the bond markets don't

5:44

care about many things that are

5:46

doing real damage. But it does strike

5:48

me that the first hundred days

5:50

of Trump's office in office were mostly

5:52

felt in Washington DC and not

5:55

so much in the greater American heartland.

5:57

And it does seem to me

5:59

if higher prices hit shelves or empty

6:01

shelves happen, that's definitely something

6:03

that is disciplining him, even

6:05

though absolutely what we're seeing happening

6:07

in the federal government and

6:09

in foreign policy is potentially hugely

6:11

consequential and already has been.

6:13

I should also just add on

6:16

that. There's nothing that requires

6:18

a president to deliver accomplishments in

6:20

the first 100 days. I

6:22

understand that Donald Trump on the

6:24

campaign trail made it sound

6:26

as if everything would be easy

6:28

and happen quickly. But in

6:30

his defense, some of these policies

6:32

or the success of the

6:34

hopes to come from them could

6:37

still happen. But let's turn

6:39

to audience questions. And let me

6:41

begin with the first question,

6:43

which is really a broad -based

6:45

question, Carlin. It comes to us

6:47

from at Christian underscore Morelle. And

6:50

Christian asks, what is Trump's

6:52

doctrine 2 .0? Does he

6:54

have a strategy? I

6:56

don't so much

6:58

see strategy so

7:00

much as We're

7:03

not going to be taken

7:05

advantage of. American power can

7:08

bully and insist on getting

7:10

what we want. American

7:12

exceptionalism means not just

7:14

America first, but America

7:16

unconstrained. It doesn't believe

7:18

that allies are a

7:20

force multiplier. I

7:22

think those are all pretty fundamental

7:24

things. We saw them testing that

7:26

out in the first term, but

7:28

the one thing that I suppose

7:30

that I at least understand that

7:33

perhaps one could put into, I

7:35

don't know if it's grand strategy or

7:37

petty strategy, I'm not sure where this

7:39

fits in. They seem to

7:42

have this idea that they're gonna make

7:44

a great compact, not with

7:46

European allies, not with NATO allies,

7:48

not with the structure that we stabilize

7:50

the world with in the wake

7:52

of World War II, but instead with...

7:54

Russia they seem to somehow want

7:56

to make a deal with Putin's Russia

7:58

and as far as I can

8:00

tell are the nuclear weapons and oil

8:03

I can't figure what he has

8:05

to offer but they seem to want

8:07

to make a deal with Russia

8:09

and make beautiful music with them that

8:11

seems to be the biggest strategic

8:13

change that Donald Trump is offering right

8:15

now. Matias I want to break

8:17

up. Carlos point just now because there's

8:19

a question about allies and there's

8:22

a question about what we traditionally called

8:24

adversaries. And we got a lot

8:26

of questions from our listeners about Donald

8:28

Trump's approach to allies. Let me

8:30

just read a couple of them. At

8:33

Marcy Lee 2000, put the question

8:35

really in a positive format, she

8:37

says, does Donald Trump hope to

8:40

make any new allies? Marin

8:42

Dodd Fresca came at it with

8:44

a more negative spin. She

8:46

asked, why is he intent

8:48

on alienating current U .S. allies? And

8:51

a sort of sharper form

8:53

of that question came from at

8:56

Alexis V7 who asks, help

8:58

me understand why we're pushing away

9:00

Canada and Mexico as allies.

9:02

So how do you think Donald

9:04

Trump thinks about friends, partners,

9:06

and allies? Yeah, I mean,

9:08

A lot of analysts, I

9:10

think rightly, see Donald Trump's

9:12

approach as very transactional. It

9:14

doesn't matter whether you have

9:16

the same values of democracy

9:18

and freedom, rule of law.

9:21

What matters is what America can get from

9:23

you. So it's a very zero sum

9:26

view of the world, meaning what I win,

9:28

you lose. So they have to be

9:30

losers for me to win, which is kind

9:32

of like how the New York real

9:34

estate market works. You

9:36

want to buy a building that means

9:38

other people didn't buy it. You bought

9:40

it, you got a good price, you got

9:42

a good deal. And if they get

9:44

it, you don't. Exactly. While traditionally the

9:46

United States, especially since World War II, has

9:49

thought of, no, allies are growing, that

9:51

means we grow too. We can both

9:53

win, we can both trade whatever you import,

9:55

I export, and we're doing

9:57

it because it makes sense, all the good

9:59

principles of comparative advantage. he

10:01

does seem to have a spheres of

10:03

influence view of the world, right? Break

10:05

that down for me, because I know

10:07

for those of us who have PhDs

10:09

in political science, international relations, you

10:12

know, we get very excited talking about

10:14

spheres of influence, but what do you

10:16

think it means or how it sort

10:18

of shapes what it is that Trump

10:20

is doing? What we

10:22

think of as a real, politic view

10:24

of the world, meaning that the strong

10:26

nations do what they can and the

10:29

weak accept what they must, I think

10:31

that's... Credit to Thucydides right there, and

10:33

it gets back to the point that

10:35

Carla made about pricing power, raw power.

10:37

So he looks at Xi Jinping, he

10:39

looks at Vladimir Putin, he sees strong

10:41

men who are firmly in control of

10:43

their country. In a way, he

10:45

likes to think of himself as a businessman

10:47

who's in firm command of the Trump Organization

10:49

and now of America, incorporated. So

10:52

he wants to give orders and he wants

10:54

everybody to follow them. That's how he's

10:56

created his cabinet, based on loyalty rather than

10:58

expertise. So Europe

11:00

doesn't fit neatly into this.

11:02

It's annoying for him. The European

11:04

Union, it's 28 countries, 27

11:06

countries. They have this common

11:08

decision making, it takes forever. He

11:11

wants to give an order, he wants

11:13

to make deals and he can't do that.

11:15

Canada, I think he sees as the

11:17

51st state. He's not joking about this. That's

11:19

why he also wants Greenland, and that's

11:21

why he wants to control the Panama Canal.

11:23

So the Western Hemisphere, North America

11:25

mostly, he wants under complete control

11:27

of the United States. And if

11:29

that's the case, he's very happily

11:31

willing to let Eastern Europe to

11:33

the Russians. and let

11:35

the Indo -Pacific be controlled by

11:37

the Chinese. That's a

11:39

very different approach for a Republican

11:42

president compared to, let's say,

11:44

Ronald Reagan or even compared to

11:46

his democratic predecessors. It's

11:48

left many allies confused and

11:50

angry to some extent

11:52

because They don't quite understand

11:54

why they're the ones who always

11:56

are the receiving end of Trump's

11:59

ire and seen as free riders

12:01

of American power. When many of

12:03

European allies, Denmark is a good

12:05

example, which is the Greenland

12:07

is part of Denmark because they've supported

12:09

American military campaigns in the past. They

12:11

spend a lot on defense. They're good

12:13

soldiers in that sense. I have to

12:15

ask you, because you grew up in

12:18

Europe, how would you

12:20

describe Europe's reaction to Trump

12:22

2 .0? Well, look at the

12:24

numbers. Tourism figures

12:26

from the UK and Germany,

12:28

two of the most reliable partners.

12:30

and allies of the United States are

12:33

down year on year in March by

12:35

close to 20%. The Europeans are voting

12:37

with their feet. They're not quite banning

12:39

American products the way the Canadians started

12:41

to do in the beginning of the

12:43

Trump administration. But there's a

12:45

huge sense that America is

12:47

no longer a reliable ally

12:50

protector and I think it

12:52

does help European elites

12:54

to make the case that the European

12:56

Union needs to move on and

12:58

create its own independent thinking, strategic autonomy,

13:00

sovereignty, whatever you to Well, the

13:02

Trump people would say that's what they're

13:04

trying to do. My question to

13:06

you is, is that good for the

13:08

United States? It would have been

13:10

good for the United States. It was

13:12

done in a structured, friendly manner

13:14

with American support. But now what worries

13:16

me is that, and I'm sure

13:18

we'll talk about this in a minute,

13:21

that this could be a fundamental

13:23

rift in the transatlantic alliance

13:25

and that Europe will basically take

13:27

a very transactional approach to

13:29

the United States and reassess it

13:31

every four years, depending on

13:33

who's president. Well, Carla, how do

13:36

you respond to the point

13:38

that Matias just made? Do you

13:40

think this is... just another

13:42

kerfuffle in the transatlantic relationship. We

13:44

seem to have them every

13:46

10 years or so and people

13:48

in our business sort of

13:50

wring their hands about the end

13:52

of the transatlantic relationship. Or

13:54

is there something about what is

13:56

happening under Trump 2 .0 that

13:58

really is fundamentally different, that

14:00

really does have the potential to

14:02

break the relationship. I mean,

14:04

incoming German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and

14:06

night of his election said

14:08

that quite bluntly, that in essence

14:10

the Germany had to act

14:12

on the assumption that the United

14:14

States cared nothing about European

14:16

security. We've seen Mark Carney, the

14:18

new prime minister of Canada, talk

14:21

about how essentially Canada is a different

14:23

relationship with the United States and the

14:25

rest of the world. Is this sort

14:27

of a hot house talking, or do

14:29

you think we're witnessing something more significant?

14:33

I think the Europeans have been talking that

14:35

way for a really long time, but it's

14:37

always been aspirational when they've talked about having

14:39

their own pillar, when they sort of

14:41

played with the idea that they were going to

14:43

take the responsibility for Bosnia and then blow it

14:45

big time. They play that game

14:47

for a really, really long time, and then they

14:49

blow it. They really have never had the

14:51

capacity to do it. They've never been willing to

14:53

spend the money to do it. But that's

14:55

always been aspirational. Now, it's out of desperation. And

14:58

they're seeing what the rest of

15:00

us are seeing, which is even

15:02

if, four years from now, a

15:05

different president comes in, whether it's a

15:07

Democrat or it's an internationalist Republican, the

15:10

disruption of American

15:13

institutions If we

15:15

walk away from NATO, if we cede

15:17

Ukraine to the Russians, if

15:19

AID is completely destroyed, if we no

15:21

longer have any soft power left in the

15:23

world because we... And you think this

15:25

is what's happening? It seems to be what's

15:27

happening, but it's only been a hundred

15:29

days. It's remarkable how much can be dismantled

15:31

in a hundred days. You could imagine

15:33

if this continues on this trajectory for four

15:35

years. They're seeing what we're seeing. It's

15:38

hard to rebuild what you can take apart

15:40

so quickly. And they're seeing what we are seeing

15:42

on this. On a certain level, you can

15:44

say, wow, it's about time

15:46

that the NATO allies finally take responsibility

15:48

for their own defense. But as

15:50

Mattias said, that needs to be done

15:52

in an orderly way, not in

15:54

a desperate way. And so

15:56

we can say that there's a loss

15:58

of soft power. There are all

16:00

these other things. But we are dismantling

16:02

structures. And they are

16:04

very aware of that. And so

16:07

This is not orderly. This is

16:09

out of desperation and fear, and

16:11

lots of bad things happen when

16:13

desperation and fear happen. So my

16:15

takeaway is the aphorism that applies

16:17

is that you cannot unscramble an

16:20

omelette. There'll be a

16:22

lot of scrambling, but that omelette won't

16:24

be unscramble. Or it's easy to break

16:26

things. It's hard to build them. Matthias,

16:28

let's talk a little bit about this

16:30

issue of great power rivalry. At

16:32

Eduardo Curry asks, is creating

16:34

a gap between Russia and China

16:36

still a sought -after objective? And

16:38

I guess I would sort

16:40

of add on to Eduardo's question.

16:43

Is Trump's approach to Ukraine

16:45

fundamentally about creating what we

16:47

call a reverse Kissinger or

16:50

a reverse Nixon? This

16:52

is harkening back to the

16:54

1970s when President Richard Nixon

16:56

and then National Security Advisor

16:58

and Secretary of State Henry

17:00

Kissinger engineered or

17:02

approached mom between Washington and

17:04

Beijing. It was sort of seen

17:06

as a big move on the global

17:08

chess board by taking two big powers

17:10

and aligning them against Soviet Union. I

17:12

think if we wanted to make sense,

17:15

rational sense of what Trump is doing

17:17

with Russia, that would be a

17:19

potential explanation. But as Carla suggested earlier,

17:21

it's not quite clear what we're

17:23

getting from Russia, right? Or what they

17:25

can give us. Do you think

17:28

President Putin is playing President Trump? I

17:30

think Trump wants to deal with

17:32

Putin. And I think he does want

17:34

to deal with Xi. And

17:36

he's talked about this quite openly, where he

17:38

said, you know, we're going to do a

17:40

beautiful deal with Russia. We're going to do

17:42

a deal with Xi. And he actually said

17:44

that if he got the two in a

17:47

room together, he was not going to just

17:49

talk about the limitation or the reduction of

17:51

strategic nuclear arms arsenal. He was

17:53

also going to talk just about sizing down.

17:55

the Pentagon and you know slimming

17:58

down the militaries because all this

18:00

money they're wasting supposedly on military

18:02

spending could be used to you

18:04

know build beachfront properties or other

18:06

things that people may want. And

18:09

so I again I think the one

18:11

thing we've learned from Trump in the first

18:13

hundred days is to take him literally

18:15

and seriously unlike the first administration where many

18:17

of us took him seriously but not

18:19

literally or the other way around. It's

18:22

not clear that he wants a

18:24

reverse Kissinger because I think the US

18:26

is much more intertwined with China

18:28

today. And I think he's starting to

18:30

realize this with his very high

18:32

tariffs. That is, it's not that easy

18:34

to do to isolate China. And

18:36

if he did want to do this,

18:38

then he needed the Europeans on

18:40

his side, right? And so what he's

18:42

doing with Russia means it's quite

18:44

the opposite because that's driving the Europeans

18:46

closer to China. quite one thing.

18:48

But there's the added complication, of course,

18:50

that the Chinese are supporting Russia

18:52

in their effort in Ukraine. Well, let's

18:54

get back to the question from

18:56

a listener earlier about, does Donald Trump

18:58

have a strategy? One of

19:00

the hallmarks of having a

19:02

strategy is you try to

19:04

minimize the contradictions that are

19:06

operating here. I think a

19:08

lot of what Trump is

19:10

doing seems to be working

19:12

against other parts of what

19:14

Trump is doing. I was

19:16

struck particularly with the offer

19:18

to help Russia rebuild its

19:20

oil and gas sector that

19:22

would seem to run against

19:24

Donald Trump's desire to want

19:26

to increase in Unleash America's

19:29

oil and gas sectors because

19:31

they are competitors in the

19:33

global market. Carl, I want

19:35

to come to this question

19:37

of the reverse Kissinger, but

19:39

also about how you view

19:41

Trump's approach to China. Let

19:43

me just ask you a

19:45

question that listener at GW

19:47

underscore 3737 asked, and it

19:49

is, what is Trump's plan

19:51

with one China policy in

19:53

Taiwan? This is, you know,

19:55

I honestly don't know. I

19:57

mean, Trump has said a

19:59

lot of things about Taiwan

20:01

over the years. There seems

20:03

to be, though, this through

20:05

line of resentment toward Taiwan.

20:08

much as if they stole the

20:10

United States' semiconductor industry set at

20:12

time and again. Yes. And also

20:14

resentment that we are protecting them. We

20:17

hear that again and again from him,

20:19

not just toward Europe, but also towards

20:21

South Korea and toward Japan. And

20:24

Taiwan is on that list of

20:26

why do we have to do

20:29

this? So that, of

20:31

course, goes against a

20:33

big part of the Republican

20:35

Party. And You remember

20:37

before, you know, just at the time

20:39

the Russians were about to invade Ukraine,

20:41

there was a big debate inside the

20:43

Republican Party about should we do Ukraine?

20:45

Is it going to divert resources and

20:47

attention from Taiwan? Taiwan was almost an

20:49

article of religious faith for a lot

20:51

of hawks in the Republican Party itself.

20:53

And now you see a big split

20:55

in the Republican Party of people who

20:57

say we shouldn't do anything anywhere. We

20:59

should believe them all to themselves, the

21:01

people who still are the big Taiwan

21:03

believers. And I think Trump Trump is really,

21:05

you know, to go back to sort

21:07

of the transactional view of the world,

21:09

I think he sees Taiwan as a

21:11

burden. I'm not sure he's going to

21:13

say it all that directly because there's

21:15

still a lot of people on the

21:17

Hill Republicans he needs the support of

21:19

when it comes to the budget and

21:21

all that. But I think that is

21:23

his attitude toward Taiwan. No, Carla,

21:26

I would add to that because it

21:28

strikes me it's not just that

21:30

Donald Trump presents Taiwan for It's

21:32

alleged sins of

21:34

stealing America's semiconductor industry.

21:37

It's also that he seems to be deeply

21:39

skeptical. of the wisdom

21:42

of trying to defend Taiwan. He

21:44

has repeatedly pointed out that

21:46

Taiwan is very close to China

21:48

and a very long way

21:50

away from the United States. And

21:53

again, this is someone

21:55

who has campaigned about America's

21:57

excessive use of the

21:59

military, excessive military interventions. But

22:01

all this gets me to a

22:03

question, and it's the one surprise I

22:05

have with this first 100 days.

22:07

I'm not sure what Donald Trump's China

22:09

policy is. I know

22:11

what the policies are that people

22:14

like Secretary of State Marco

22:16

Rubio and National Security Advisor Mike

22:18

Walts have articulated. I think

22:20

they would proudly describe themselves as

22:22

China hawks. I'm not sure

22:24

at the end of the day

22:26

that's where Donald Trump is

22:29

and I think to me one

22:31

of the interesting questions as

22:33

we go beyond the first 100

22:35

days is How does

22:37

China policy evolve? Will

22:39

Trump make these commitments to Taiwan that

22:42

many of his subordinates want to make? Or

22:44

is it the case that he's just

22:46

looking to do a trade deal with China,

22:48

and if he can get a trade

22:50

deal, and that's a big if, will

22:52

he be satisfied with that? If I had

22:54

to bet, I think it would be that,

22:56

because if you looked at the way he

22:58

talked about China in the first term, I

23:01

mean, China was his major foil when

23:03

he ran the first time around. He

23:05

kept talking about how China was raping

23:07

the United States. It was sort of

23:09

in the days when we still had

23:11

political norms. Everybody was quite shocked when

23:13

he used the term on the campaign

23:15

trail and then he used it again

23:17

and again. I talked about currency

23:19

manipulation. He talked about all that resentment

23:21

we began to hear toward everyone else was

23:23

first focused solely on China. But

23:25

at the same time, he was quite

23:27

admiring of she and the strong man that

23:30

she was. And when she looked like

23:32

she was suddenly breaking norms in China and

23:34

that he was going to become president

23:36

for life, you could hear him sort of

23:38

say, wow, I sort of wish I

23:40

could do that too. If

23:43

he admires Putin as a strong man, she's

23:45

a much stronger strong man than Putin. So

23:47

if I had to bet, you know, I

23:49

think Jim and I'm not a signage. If

23:51

I think Jim, you're right. I think if

23:53

he can get a really pretty trade deal,

23:55

certainly human rights are shutting down the human

23:57

rights bureaus over at the state. I don't

23:59

think that's going to be a major thing.

24:01

And I, whether he'll completely trade away Taiwan,

24:03

the way he looks like he's about to

24:05

trade away Ukraine, we will see. I

24:08

think there's more of a drag on

24:10

that, you know, from the Republican Party.

24:12

But I think if you can get

24:14

a trade deal, I think that that's

24:16

going to be the main focus. Carla,

24:19

to go back to a point you

24:21

made earlier in Donald Trump's sort of

24:23

worldview, which is a dog eat dog

24:25

place. Also, as Matias pointed out, it's

24:27

I win, you lose. If you win,

24:29

I lose. It strikes me that he

24:31

views Russia and China as the closest

24:34

to peer competitors for the United States.

24:36

They're the most powerful and everybody else

24:38

is almost a side player. That's why

24:40

when he begins to talk about spheres

24:42

of influence, how the United States is

24:44

going to dominate the Western hemisphere, what

24:46

seems to be implicit in that is

24:48

that China has a legitimate sphere of

24:51

influence and Russia has a legitimate in

24:53

its sphere of influence. But

24:55

the question always is, do we agree

24:57

on what the borders of those spheres

24:59

of influence are in what you are

25:01

legitimately allowed to do? That's a bigger

25:03

question. Matthias, I want to come to

25:05

a set of questions that are in

25:08

your wheelhouse in terms of the work

25:10

you do. And as you might imagine,

25:12

it has to do with the most

25:14

beautiful word in the English language, which

25:16

is tariffs. And let me just give

25:18

you a flavor of the questions. At

25:20

Christian Eye Oliver asks, what is the

25:23

long run goal of tariffs? What

25:25

kind of world does

25:27

Trump want to create? And

25:29

I'll pair it with

25:31

another question from attouchard .buckets

25:33

who ask, is there a

25:35

more effective way instead

25:37

of tariffs to address China's

25:39

unfair trade practices? It's

25:41

an excellent question because here,

25:44

and it continues with the theme,

25:46

I feel like that sums up

25:48

this podcast, is that

25:50

there's contradictions in Trump's goals

25:52

here and his strategy. On

25:55

the one hand, the big

25:57

price for Donald Trump

25:59

is reindustrialization, bringing those good

26:01

manufacturing jobs back to

26:03

America, making stuff again. And

26:06

China is the big opponent

26:08

there, the big foe. And so

26:11

very high tariffs with China,

26:13

in theory, should convince many

26:15

companies in the world to invest directly

26:17

in the US, so they avoid that

26:19

extra tax from not producing in the

26:21

US. But many companies are

26:23

immediately saying, well, that needs to be long -term

26:25

commitment, and it needs to be very high. It

26:27

needs to be 50%, 60 % for it to

26:29

be worth it to come to the US. But

26:32

that's in direct contradiction with his

26:34

second goal of his tariffs, is that

26:36

he wants the revenue. So if

26:38

you think about roughly $3 trillion worth

26:40

of imports every year of goods

26:43

in the United States, At

26:45

10%, anybody can do math

26:47

well enough. That's $300 billion

26:49

a year. Now let's

26:51

assume that this, of course, hits. imports

26:53

because they're more expensive so it falls

26:55

to two and a half trillion that's

26:57

still 250 billion over 10 years that's

26:59

two and a half trillion and you

27:01

know before you know you're talking real

27:03

money right and so that then allows

27:05

him to push for corporate tax cuts

27:07

or permanent income tax cuts which he

27:09

wants to make or no tax on

27:11

tips or no tax on tips no tax

27:13

on overtime all all these sorts of

27:15

electoral promises. But of course, if you

27:17

want to make everything in America, that

27:19

means you're not importing anything anymore. So

27:21

it's either one or the other, right?

27:23

You either produce everything here at high

27:25

cost, high labor costs and much

27:27

higher prices. Also, this is

27:29

the guy who campaigned against high inflation

27:32

and blamed Joe Biden for the

27:34

higher prices since the COVID pandemic. Or

27:36

you want the revenue, but then

27:38

you have to keep buying stuff from

27:40

the rest of the world at

27:42

not too high prices because otherwise you

27:45

wouldn't buy it in the first

27:47

place, right? So is there a better,

27:49

more efficient way of achieving some

27:51

of these goals? And then everybody who

27:53

studied a basic international trade, a

27:55

basic international economics course will get at

27:58

some point to the arguments for

28:00

protection section. And you'll go through

28:02

all these arguments and for national security

28:04

reasons and other reasons this is perfectly

28:06

acceptable. But if it's purely

28:08

you want to produce stuff in

28:10

America again, then the Biden approach

28:12

of subsidizing it or through tax

28:14

breaks is actually much more efficient.

28:17

Why? There's a producer cost

28:19

for sure. That's where the subsidy go.

28:21

But for consumers, there's no higher prices.

28:23

So what subsidies do is there's no

28:25

loss to the consumer. I

28:27

mean there's a gain to the producer

28:29

and of course that is a

28:31

transfer from the government to the producer.

28:33

But that's exactly opposite of the

28:35

approach the Trump administration is taking. I

28:38

mean subsidies come in all shapes

28:40

and forms and I will note that

28:42

one of the ways government can

28:44

subsidize industry manufacturing or otherwise is by

28:46

investing in basic research. And

28:48

what we've seen is the Trump

28:50

administration slashing support, particularly for colleges

28:52

and universities, arguing that this is

28:54

stuff that either doesn't need to be

28:56

done or can be better done

28:58

by the private sector. There's a

29:00

very insightful quote from the CEO

29:02

of Apple, Tim Cook, when he

29:05

was asked, you know, why are they

29:07

producing these iPhones in China? Is

29:09

it because of cheap labor? And

29:11

he was kind of surprised because he said, well,

29:13

I would love to know where there's cheap labor

29:15

left in China because let me know where it

29:17

is and I'll go there. He's like, the reason

29:19

we're there is because of. the engineers that can

29:22

do this kind of work and that can put

29:24

together these sorts of things. And

29:26

I think that's where if there's

29:28

a reason why Japan, China and

29:30

Germany are successful still at manufacturing,

29:32

you have to look at their

29:34

education systems, vocational training, very early

29:36

on, technical colleges and all that

29:38

stuff. So if Trump were serious

29:41

about doing reindustrialization, you can achieve

29:43

what he wants to achieve the

29:45

Biden way through subsidies or tax

29:47

breaks, or his way through tariffs,

29:49

but you have to put in place

29:51

the research and development and the community

29:53

colleges, the technical colleges, all these things.

29:55

And that seems to me a dimension

29:57

that's sorely missing from this strategy, if

29:59

indeed we can call it that. Well,

30:01

this goes back to a point that

30:03

you made earlier that it is easier

30:06

to campaign than it is to govern

30:08

because on the campaign trail, you can

30:10

promise sunshine and rainbows and you don't

30:12

have to worry about whether you can

30:14

deliver and once you are governing

30:16

you have to make choices and things

30:18

can come into conflict. Carla, I want

30:20

to ask a set of questions that

30:22

really goes to your wheelhouse given the

30:24

number of news stories you've written over

30:26

the years about decision making in Washington.

30:28

It will come as no surprise to

30:30

you that a lot of our listeners

30:32

are really interested in our decisions. get

30:35

made in the Trump administration. At

30:38

Izumbolo asks, how much

30:40

is Trump listening to his

30:42

policy advisors? How much

30:44

of his foreign policy is his own? And

30:47

there's also a question from Oscar

30:49

Barry One, who I have to let

30:51

everybody know is my research associate. He

30:54

wants to know, how different

30:56

is the process of the

30:58

Trump administration's foreign policy decision

31:01

making from previous administrations? or

31:03

as Hassan E. Taleb asked,

31:05

why all the chaos? I

31:07

have been struck at what

31:09

a weak national security team he

31:11

has. There are

31:13

no major players around

31:16

him. There's nobody who, as

31:18

far as I can tell, can

31:20

push back against the president. He has

31:22

isolated his secretary of state, you

31:24

know, the few moments in which Marco

31:26

Rubio Let's not forget, he dubbed

31:28

him Little Marco, and he continues to

31:30

treat him like Little Marco. The

31:33

few moments when Marco has stood up

31:35

on his hind legs, if you

31:37

recall, when Elon Musk actually got up

31:39

and said, AID is no more.

31:41

And Rubio said, no, actually, it's going to be part

31:43

of the State Department. I thought it was actually

31:45

a pretty slick move. Thought he was going to save

31:47

it. And the next thing you knew might have

31:49

been part of the State Department, but it was still

31:51

gone. Mike Walts, you know,

31:53

Mike Walts. We don't know what goes

31:55

on inside the White House, but Mike Walts

31:58

for a long time there looked like

32:00

a dead man walking because of signal gain.

32:02

And Pete Hags asked, why talking about

32:04

someone who's really got a troubled life here?

32:06

So there are no Jim Bakers out

32:08

there. There are no major players out there

32:10

who were talking. There's not, you know,

32:12

there's no Hillary Clinton's. There's not even Rex

32:14

Tillerson out there to push back against

32:16

Donald Trump on, certainly not a Mike Pompeo

32:18

to push back against Donald Trump on

32:20

foreign policy. So as far as I can

32:23

tell, it's all Donald Trump. The

32:25

other thing about it is I don't

32:27

think in the first term there was much

32:29

process and I think suspect there's a

32:31

lot less. We don't have

32:33

a lot of insight into it

32:35

but what we do know for

32:37

example in the first term is

32:39

before he had his meetings with

32:41

the North Korean leader there were

32:44

no principles meetings. He just went

32:46

in there and winged it. The

32:48

idea that you give a dictator,

32:50

a meeting with the president the United States,

32:53

and you don't sit down and figure out

32:55

what you want for that meeting first,

32:57

because he's so confident about his ability to

32:59

just negotiate, that is

33:01

an extraordinary thing, that lack

33:03

of process. Now, his level

33:05

of self -confidence about his ability

33:07

to negotiate, I suppose, is

33:09

so big that he doesn't

33:11

need meetings like that, but

33:13

it does explain the cast,

33:15

I think, that we're seeing

33:17

out there. Just on that

33:19

point, Carla, I think that

33:21

all presidents get the foreign

33:24

policy team in the decision

33:26

-making process they want. Oh,

33:28

sure. And it's pretty clear

33:30

that Donald Trump's takeaway from

33:32

Trump 1 .0 is that he

33:34

did not want senior leaders

33:36

on his team acting as

33:38

guardrails or constraints. He wanted

33:40

people who would enable him

33:42

to enact what he sees

33:44

as fundamental to reorienting

33:47

American foreign policy. And I think a

33:49

lot of the stories obviously that are written

33:51

on this about the tick talk of

33:53

what's going in or out and whether it's

33:55

like. past administrations or how it differs

33:57

flies over the heads of most Americans, because

33:59

at the end the day, they're not

34:01

interested in how the decision gets made. They

34:03

want to know if the decision is

34:05

going to make their lives better. And

34:08

I think we right now are making

34:10

all kinds of judgments about where we

34:12

are after 100 days of Trump. But

34:14

I'll just point out that we have

34:17

three and three quarter years left to

34:19

go. There are a lot more shoes

34:21

to drop. And one of the interesting

34:23

questions is going to be what kind

34:25

of learning takes place? Does

34:27

the administration decide to curtail

34:29

or is it double down?

34:31

And Matthias just showed me

34:33

a headline from The Economist,

34:35

which tells me it's not

34:37

just three and a half

34:39

years, it's 1 ,361 days to

34:41

go. I want to

34:43

close actually by asking each of you

34:46

and I'll begin with Matthias first, what

34:49

is it that you are looking

34:51

for going ahead? Is there some decision

34:53

you think is currently on the

34:55

back burner? Maybe it's teeing up and

34:57

getting ready to be unveiled that

34:59

you think could be consequently for the

35:01

good or for the ill? It's

35:04

a good question. Donald Trump's

35:06

main strength and weakness at the

35:08

same time is his unpredictability, right?

35:10

So in many ways, the fact

35:12

that he keeps everybody in suspense

35:14

keeps everybody focused on him. I

35:17

have been amazed though, I mean, if you

35:19

just think about the first 100 days and

35:21

how chaotic they often were and how bad

35:23

this is for business, do not know what's

35:25

next, how much a tariff is going to

35:27

be and so on. The

35:30

International Monetary Fund in

35:32

its spring meetings downgraded

35:34

its expectation from 2

35:36

.8 % growth for the

35:38

United States to 1

35:41

.9. That is

35:43

a number that Europe could only

35:45

dream of, for example. So

35:47

despite all this, somehow

35:49

this country keeps humming

35:51

along economically. And

35:53

so the question is, is that going

35:55

to stay? Is he going to be sensitive

35:57

to this? How much damage is he

35:59

willing to do for the kind of bigger

36:02

goal of whether it's to re -industrialize the

36:04

country, having allies spend

36:06

more on defense? I mean,

36:08

he doesn't seem to have as many cards

36:10

as he thinks because he seems to

36:12

be caving left and right on the bigger

36:14

issues, including on China, including on the

36:16

Federal Reserve, including on even Doge. On

36:19

the other hand, we also know that

36:21

every time there's a bit of good

36:23

news, especially from a market point of

36:25

view, the next few days it can

36:27

be a bit of bad news, right?

36:30

And so I wonder at what point

36:32

will this settle in some sort of

36:34

more predictable pattern? And what worries me

36:36

is that it won't. Okay, Karla, let

36:38

me ask you, what do you think

36:40

our listeners should be paying attention to

36:42

going forward? People may be tired of

36:45

it, but I think people have to

36:47

watch what happens with Ukraine. I

36:49

think it's incredibly important. This

36:51

is the entire question

36:54

of our relationship with our

36:56

allies, and are we

36:58

throwing ourselves in with Russia

37:00

and with the autocrats? Or

37:02

are we going to stick

37:04

with democracies? Are we going

37:06

to consider alliances, you know,

37:08

force multipliers? Or are we

37:10

really going to retreat, as

37:12

Matias said, into this sphere

37:14

of influence idea? And that's

37:16

a pretty Hobbesian world of,

37:18

you know, nasty brutish and

37:20

short lives. So, You

37:22

may think that Ukraine is really far

37:24

away and it's not in NATO and

37:26

what do we owe them and all

37:28

of that? I think the future of

37:30

whether or not we're on team democracy

37:32

or whether we're on team autocracy is

37:35

going to be decided in Ukraine. On

37:37

that sobering note, I'll close up this

37:39

special edition of the president's inbox. My

37:41

guests have been Matthias Matthais, senior

37:43

fellow for Europe at the Council, and

37:46

Carla Ann Robbins, senior fellow at the

37:48

Council. Mattias and Carla, as

37:50

always, delight to chat. Thanks for

37:52

having us. Thanks, Jim. Please subscribe

37:54

to the President's Inbox and Apple

37:56

Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, wherever

37:58

you listen. And leave us a

38:01

review. We love the feedback. A

38:03

transcript of our conversation is available

38:05

on the podcast page for the

38:07

President's inbox on cfr .org. As always,

38:09

opinions expressed on the President's inbox

38:11

are solely those of the host

38:13

or our guest, not of CFR,

38:15

which takes no institutional positions on

38:17

matters of policy. Today's episode was

38:20

produced by Justin Schuster with recording

38:22

engineer Eli Gonzalez and director of

38:24

podcasting, Gabrielle Sierra. This is

38:26

Jim Lindsay. Thanks for listening.