Method to his Madness?

Does Trump have a vision, a doctrine towards which he works? (Forget the “how”, the question is about the “what”). Or does he do whatever catches his attention next, gets fixated on it, until the next thing comes along? (North Korea yesterday, trade war with China today, who knows what tomorrow).

I found this article, The Trump Doctrine, by Bruno Maçães intriguing:

1)      Trump’s inauguration speech was odd, he writes, because:

“It left out the core of what an elected politician in the United States would include: an appeal to the universal principles of freedom, democracy and equality guiding America in its action(s).”

2)     But it may have been an indicator that Trump wants to copy whatever works elsewhere, including China’s policy of achieving economic growth by any and all means necessary.

3)     He may also think of Europe as a “has-been”, a continent which in the last 3 decades, has “produced a single company that deserves to be called a world leader: the Spanish Zara”. Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Baidu, Ali Baba, Flipkart, Ola.. they’re all American, Chinese or Indian.

4)     He also seems to accept the obvious, namely the continuing shift in the global economy’s “center of gravity”:

“Calculating the global economy’s center of gravity—plotting a point on a map approximating the average distance to the poles of economic activity—provides some clues to what is going on. In the three decades after 1945, this center of gravity was located somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic, reflecting how Europe and North America dominated the world’s economy. By the turn of the century, however, this point had shifted so much that it was now located east of the borders of the European Union. Within ten years, we should find it east of the border between Europe and Asia, and by the middle of this century, most likely somewhere between India and China.”

More importantly, based on the above:

“The United States can be thought of as a high-precision compass that tracks the movement of this center of gravity, and adapts its foreign policy accordingly.”

5)     If Europe is in denial (or indifferent) to that shift, Trump seems to feel that he should “leave Europe living in that past” and form new allies in Asia instead:

“The fact that the United States will at some point no longer have a majority white population will help the process.”

6)     If China is set to dominate, and is positioned such that its government can use its “private” sector to suit its needs, maybe Trump feels the need to have new weapons. Like tariffs and trade wars.

Wow! That sounds like an actual, coherent strategy! Of course, that doesn’t mean he actually has one, but what if there is some method to his madness after all?