Whether you love or hate Trump you must admire his ‘MO’ and transactional style.
I’ve been in the business of negotiating for 50 years, trying to sell trophy properties to the cognoscenti and goodness knows I know how hard it is to get momentous things done and make things happen.
The usual motley collection of flabby-bottomed bureaucrats, embodied by the EU caucus for instance, sit, pontificate, and exchange gaseous substances in their ivory castles, getting very little done, but consuming a lot of resources in the process.
Trade agreements between countries are notoriously difficult to organise and can take up to ten years, involving thousands of well-oiled lunches and dinners until they tediously reach a crescendo, if in fact they ever do.
Trump’s use of tariffs, in-order to extract a lightning-like solution – whether this be in relation to Columbia, Canada, or Mexico – is nothing short of miraculous. It’s a bit like ‘speed baiting’ on steroids and he gets to the nub of the issue in hours from the phone on the golf course, instead of months of prevaricating between Ambassadors and the like.
He has the power and the will and he is using it, and who can blame him?
Now, the EU and China are in the crosshairs of his Gatling gun and let’s see what they have to offer by way of acquiescence. This method of shotgun diplomacy is being taken by him to a new level.
Thank goodness the UK has a balanced trade agreement with the US (mostly in relation to services which are immune from tariffs anyway) and what is more, Trump loves us, despite having Sir ‘Feeble’ Starmer at the helm who is trying to steer a tricky course between the EU and the USA.
Trump has two years to implement his electoral promises, before the Republicans lose their majority in The House and he ‘ain’t’ wasting a moment on empty rhetoric.
I would be interested to see how those laggards in the EU deal with a trade surplus with America. These overpaid bureaucrats are certainly not used to this type of instantaneous transactional politics.
Once upon a time, Europe had the same GDP and population as America but in the last ten years, they are 40% smaller, with a third of the growth and double the unemployment rate. They are just inept at running their own countries.
This super-effective, international problem-solving method is not necessarily new, since it was used in the past more than ably by Israel, with the raid on Entebbe, and Margaret Thatcher’s audacious recapturing of the Falklands many years ago.
I feel sure that behind closed doors the Ukrainian peace deal is being thrashed out as we speak, and I am certain that Netanyahu was told by the President to find a sustainable peaceful settlement in Gaza and Lebanon, which assuredly must involve Saudi Arabia and Iran.
The breathless antics of the Trump administration are in sharp contrast to the lazy, sloth-like, low energy ‘Jurassic Joe Biden’ and his dozy team of ‘dumb nuts’. Everyone knows that tariffs, in the medium to long term, are not a sustainable solution for any country, but Trump is using them as a temporary fix to get other foreign leaders to sit up and take note.
Putin must be carefully watching this international scene in the knowledge that he could be next, and I feel sure that he is clenching his ‘Muscovite buttocks’ in advance of a tricky negotiation to settle the war, which he needs to do sooner rather than later.
President ‘Wimp’ Obama demonstrated a pathetic, limp-wristed response to the use of chemical weapons by President Assad of Syria, which crossed Obama’s ‘red line’ at the time, but without retribution from America. This inevitably gave the despots of the world the green light to ply their trade with impunity or so it came to pass.
Trump’s wild card is that he can be a little unhinged in both his narrative and his actions, however this presents him with an excellent pre-requisite in dealing with the world’s problems, as no one quite knows how he will react to them.
I think we are all sick and tired of the liberal, feeble-minded ‘Chamberlains’ of this world. We have been thirsting for a modern-day Churchill, but one who works out every day in the gym, throws the javelin, heads the ball and pulls trucks with his teeth. We certainly have these caricatures in Mr. Trump, whether you like him or not.
All this cacophony of frenetic energy may cause some disruption initially to the world order, but peace will reign before too long. Whilst the Capital markets will gyrate for a while, I don’t see this having much effect on the residential property market in the UK, which seems to relentlessly continue trundling along, not going up very much but not down either and I believe this will be the continuing pattern for 2025.
We live in very interesting times.
Trevor Abrahmsohn, Glentree International