If not now, when?

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Last week, the new US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, visited Panamá for talks. After his return, the White House told the media that Panamá had agreed to allow US warships to pass through the canal without payment, a statement which the President of Panamá immediately blasted as a lie. Rubio later walked back the claim, but clarified ominously that he had ‘made US expectations clear’. Apologists for Trump keep insisting that much of what he says and threatens is just a negotiating ploy from an experienced businessman and that this sort of thing is just an example of that, but the only business negotiations which start with a threat and ‘expectations’ are those involving the Mob. ‘Nice canal you’ve got there; be a shame if anything were to happen to it’ is not a normal approach to a business negotiation. It is increasingly clear that bullying other countries, preferably picking them off one at a time using the threat of military or economic force is the preferred modus operandi of Trump 2.0.

Starmer’s response to date is understandable, even if wrong-headed, and his instinctive indecisiveness doesn’t help. As the leader of a middle-ranking power whose electorate were persuaded to opt out of a strong trading bloc under the post-imperial delusion of being a global power, he’s in an almost impossible situation. He wants a deal with both, but his claim that the UK doesn’t need to choose between the US and the EU is nonsense. (To take just one example of where it breaks down, we cannot have a deal with the EU which facilitates free movement of agricultural produce meeting agreed standards without checks or controls alongside a deal with the US which allows agricultural produce which doesn’t meet those standards into the UK.) He probably knows that in the margins of his consciousness, but is unwilling to upset any of those who favour either approach over the other, so has decided, by default, to let things drift with an occasional act of genuflection to he-who-must-be-obeyed. Even if the so-called ‘special relationship’ ever existed, it does not currently go beyond protecting and promoting the interests of US billionaires.

It isn’t just on food products that the UK will have to give ground in pursuit of a trade deal with the US. Trump has decided that taxing the tech companies and the billionaires who own them is an act of discrimination against US companies, and has made an implicit threat of tariffs unless the UK backs down. The Brexit ‘freedom to set our own rules’ apparently contains a previously unstated caveat saying ‘unless the US decides otherwise’. Trump is also capricious. One of his latest rants concerns the replacement of paper straws with plastic ones. Paper ones, he claims, don’t work: they disintegrate during use. And you can get your drink on your tie. But his real objection seems to be that the move against single-use plastics was instigated by Biden; that is enough to make it axiomatically wrong and in need of reversal. What if he decides that any country which mandates paper straws is discriminating against US-owned companies and franchises, such as MacDonalds, or KFC? Does that become another reason for introducing tariffs?

In truth, his repeated statements suggest that he wants tariffs anyway as a basic part of his policy to reduce the income tax paid by billionaires, and that he will find an excuse to introduce them in the end. If he can extract a series of concessions by alternatively threatening and then delaying in the meantime, all the better – he still gets his tariffs and others have kneeled before him. That’s the thing about a bully like Trump. Every concession reinforces his own belief that he is strong and that others are weak; and if it comes too easily, he assumes that he simply didn’t demand enough. Thus, every demand met encourages new and bigger demands. And when he thinks that he’s extracted all he can get, he’ll do what he always intended to do anyway.

The first question for governments in the rest of the world – and this is particularly acute for any state which has deluded itself into thinking that it’s so special and unique that it can stand alone – is where and when to draw the line and call out this behaviour. Before or after the invasion of Panamá? Before or after the seizure of Greenland? Before or after the forced expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza? Before or after Trump and Putin carve up Ukraine? Maybe, as some of those supportive of him claim, he won’t actually do any of those things, but assuming that he won’t do what he has repeatedly said that he wants to do only works until he does it – and then it’s too late. Lack of vocalised opposition in advance or any consequences after the event looks a lot like acquiescence. Because that’s what it is.

The bigger question is how to stop the president of the most powerful state the world has ever seen from doing whatever he wants. It’s not a question to which there is a simple answer. We should know, however, that there is one very obvious wrong answer, and that is that each country has to fight its own battles (or, more likely, make its own concessions), which is the choice Starmer seems to be making. Strength lies in, at the very least, coordination of actions and responses. Maybe there really isn’t any way of stopping what’s happening, and we have no choice but to roll over. It would be better, though, for that to be a conclusion reached by thought and analysis and accompanied by a credible mitigation strategy rather than through complacent assumptions along the lines of ‘he really wouldn’t, would he?’.

One other thing. Assuming that we don’t need to worry because he’s only got four years and we can sort it out when he’s gone is a huge mistake. Partly, that’s because some of his changes will be hard to reverse, or even completely irreversible, including changes to voting practices in ways that benefit him and his supporters or impeaching non-compliant judges. But even if he can’t find a way of winning a third term or cancelling elections, there can still be no guarantee that it ends in four years. Whilst the constitution rules out his being elected again, it doesn’t prevent him installing a puppet and pulling the strings from the sidelines. One of his progeny, perhaps – I suspect that the idea of a hereditary presidency might well appeal to him. The only limit on his direct potential influence is his age and mortality. And even after he’s gone, he has already changed the Republican Party so much that there are plenty of others willing to carry on. Deciding to ‘wait and see’ what he does is tantamount to licensing whatever he decides to do. Yet that’s where Starmer is choosing to place the UK.