Although last week’s press conference by Donald Trump, the U.S. Presidential-Elect, was widely received as disappointingly thin on context, Trump gave a couple of major interviews over the weekend which have provided some flesh for the existing bare bones of his major policy planks. It seems clear that the President-Elect is sticking to all his major policy positions and his statements within the interviews can be summarized as follows:
Trump praised Brexit and attributed it to resentment over immigration. He also predicted that the European Union would start to break up and appeared to be indifferent to the prospect, claiming that the E.U. was basically a scheme to establish German economic domination and beat the U.S. on the terms of trade. He went on to say that Chancellor Merkel’s admission of over one million Middle Eastern migrants into Germany was a “catastrophic mistake”.
He called NATO “obsolete” and justified that statement by complaining that the organization hadn’t focused enough on combating terrorism, further saying that “many” members were not paying their fair share of the alliance’s costs. However, he went on to say that NATO is very important to him.
There was some specific economics, as usual focused on corporate plans to manufacture in Mexico. Addressing the German car manufacturer BMW, he said: "I would tell BMW, if you want to build a factory in Mexico and sell cars to the US without paying a 35% tax, forget it." Of course, it is an open question as to whether Trump would be able to persuade the U.S. Congress to pass such a tariff.
All in all, this is strong and determined stuff and the President-elect is serious about breaking several areas of consensus which U.S. Presidents have followed for a long time, most notably with a protectionist economic policy. He seems to be sticking to the positions which he campaigned on.
