Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal senior contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.
Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal.
There’s been an ongoing controversy over Donald Trump for the last decade, both when he appeared on the escalator in 2015, the campaign, the first term, the wilderness years, and the first two years of his second administration.
It works out like this. He has an art of the deal style, where he is bombastic, that he says wild things. He puts his opponents, his partners, whatever the situation is that he’s across the table from, off balance. He demands things that are ludicrous. People are shocked, they criticize him.
And then the negotiations continue, and Donald Trump gets an edge, maybe a 52, 53% edge over the original request. They sign a deal. Donald Trump is very careful not to insult his trading partner or his trading opponent in any deal. And then he says he might have been taken himself, and he walks away with a singular accomplishment.
And then people are troubled. They look at the result of the negotiations, and they’re impressed, especially if you’re Americans. But they also say the methodology clouds the achievement.
Let’s see if that’s a legitimate criticism.
When he entered office, Panama was essentially being controlled at its entry and exits in violation of the Panama Canal Treaty by Chinese-affiliated companies. And they had grandiose designs basically to take over the canal. He railed, he screamed, he threatened to go in and take it. He said the canal should go back to the United States.
Pause negotiation. Marco Rubio goes down.
Now Canada is a close ally of the United States. All of Latin America is flipping. Of the 32 nations, I think about 27 are pro-American, are capitalist, are democratic, are all three. The pink tide is over in Latin America. Just Cuba, Brazil, Mexico, Nicaragua really left as hostile communist countries or socialist countries.
And people said, “Did he really have to threaten Panama like that?”
Second case, Greenland. Greenland in World War II was a custodian, we were the custodian of Greenland’s autonomy. Why? Because its colonial mother state, Denmark, was overrun in three days by the Nazis. The Nazis had eyes on Greenland to base submarines and air fleets to control the North Atlantic. And so the United States took control of it, put a base there, kept it free, used it for the advantage of the Allies, and then turned it back to Denmark.
In the years since after the Cold War, it was sort of inert and so was Denmark. In other words, it wasn’t an issue.
Trump comes in and says the Chinese look at the Arctic as the closest air route for their missiles into North America and into Europe. And they see that its sea lanes can be controlled, and with them control, they can have access strategically to Western countries, both in the Arctic Circle near Europe and in North America.
So he says the Danes don’t have the wherewithal. Maybe we should just take it.
Everybody is appalled. Denmark gets furious. Germany sends eight or nine soldiers, and Denmark starts to say, “I’ll pledge a billion dollars to help the Greenlanders. I’ll put their flag on the coat of arms.”
Starting to work, in other words.
In other words, Donald Trump tunes down the rhetoric, and lo and behold, we now have a deal, and the deal is far better than the prior 1951 deal. People in Europe are relieved because they will not have to confront Russian or Chinese ships in the Greenland Arctic because the United States is going to be there, their ally in NATO.
Greenland is happy ’cause they’re not gonna see a lot of Americans, but they’re gonna get a lot of American money through a booming military economy.
Denmark is happy because they can say they’re still a colonial power and they control this huge continental island that’s in North America, and which is closer to New York than it is to Copenhagen. But fine, they’re the sovereigns.
It worked.
Question: Was it worth all of that bombast that riled our friends?
Next example, Canada.
Everybody knows that Canada needed a $50 billion surplus forever, I guess. They don’t meet their NATO requirements for 20 years. They have 45% of their population is first- or second-generation immigrants. Their socialist economy is inert. It’s the weakest of all the industrial Western nations.
And we’re negotiating, and they do not wanna reduce that tariff. There’s a lot of issues, I can’t get into it.
Trump says he’d like to make Alberta the 51st state. That’s the natural resource powerhouse of Canada, or the whole Canadian country a state. Nobody in the United States wants that, least of all Trump. The last thing the Republican conservative MAGA Trump people want is a left-wing Canada with 40 million people that would be another California.
So that was the art of the deal again.
When it’s all said and done, and Prime Minister Mark Carney gets his Nobel Prize or whatever he wants, the deal is going to be this: Canada will cut a deal. 80% of its trade is with the United States.
It will find ways that when we buy their oil, and they run up a big surplus, they will stop helping China evade our tariffs by getting cheap Chinese metals to assemble goods and get around the tariff.
They will drop the 5% requirement that our digital media companies have to have content that’s indigenous, content for Canada and Canadians or French. And there will be a deal. Probably they will buy more agricultural goods.
It’ll be good for the United States, and it will bring reality, and it will remind Canada that you Canadians are wonderful people, but your leaders have taken a socialist paradigm and wrecked your economy and not fully utilize your natural resource treasure house.
And then we get to NATO.
When Donald Trump came in, only six, in 2017, only six nations had pledged. They had informally in 2006, and formally a few years later, said that everybody was going to spend 2% of GDP. That’s not even counting the overhead cost of the huge American military that it doesn’t charge NATO. Logistics, intelligence, dual-use projects, joint construction of NATO bases.
And they wouldn’t budge. Barack Obama got so frustrated, he called them free riders. Free riders.
Trump comes in and says, I’m not gonna get in… We’re gonna get out of NATO. We’re not gonna…
And when he left office, all but a few, maybe six or five, had flipped. Instead of just six meeting their quota, only six had not.
He comes in again, and he says you better meet your quota. Look at what happened. In my absence, Ukraine was invaded by Russia, and I told you not to build, not to make a deal on the Nord Stream pipeline with natural gas and fuel the Russian military, but you did. And I told you you better rearm, but you didn’t. And now you’re doing something belatedly.
And so now he says I want you to make 5%, investment of GDP in your military.
And they’re starting to go along.
So what is the theme again? Well, couldn’t he have been more polite like Obama or Biden? Well, neither one of them got NATO to meet their goals, which were good for NATO.
So what am I getting at?
When you look at the results, right now there are no Chinese or Russians in Latin America. The Canadian people are getting very mad at their prime minister and starting to see he’s been disingenuous, and a lot of Canadians have said, “We’ve got to change our immigration. We’ve got to change our euthanasia policy. We’ve got to change our green madness. We’ve got to change our socialism.”
We’ll see.
Greenland’s, Greenlanders are happy. NATO is stronger than it has ever been. And there’s a first chance in our lifetime that Latin America will become all consensual governments, all pro-Western, and all much better off than they were under the Cuban, Brazilian, Nicaraguan model.
Was it worth it? You can decide.
Donald Trump polarized a lot of people with his tough talk, but would you rather have somebody who was abrasive and accomplished the following, or would you want someone mellifluous like, oh, Barack Obama or Bill Clinton, and could not achieve any of these achievements which were not just good for the United States, but were good for the Western alliance in general?
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