Whether it’s an immigration deal with Mexico, a new base for US soldiers in Poland or tariffs on Chinese imports, what’s important to Donald Trump is that some other country will pay the bill.
The US president has repeatedly boasted this month that the costs of various agreements he’s struck will either be born by foreigners or will be dramatically less expensive for taxpayers than expected — all thanks to his leadership.
He announced that 1,000 additional US soldiers would rotate through Poland, though at a base built at that government’s expense. Mexico, he said, will pay to dispatch 6,000 of its national guard troops to stop migrants from entering the US, and he’s repeatedly asserted that tariffs on Chinese imports are paid by China, not US consumers – in defiance of the consensus of economists.
He’s also said Mexico “has agreed to immediately begin buying” more goods from US farmers, a claim Mexico denies, and boasted about a discount he says he negotiated on a new version of Air Force One. He again claimed that Nato countries are paying more for their own defence thanks to him.
It’s an approach to be expected of a president who regularly describes the US as a “piggy bank” raided by foreigners and who regards trade deficits as an outright financial loss, rather than an exchange of money for goods. Trump’s transactional notions about foreign relations and trade augur a bumpy road ahead for the US and China, with Trump aiming to meet President Xi Jinping this month at the Group of 20 summit to get trade talks back on track.
“That’s very, very important for the president — whether you’re negotiating a deal or working with somebody, they have to demonstrate that commitment by demonstrating they have skin in the game,” said James Jay Carafano, vice president of the Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research group.
Citing dollars and cents is “just his shorthand way of describing it.”
In public comments, especially as he ramps up his 2020 re-election campaign, Trump often highlights other countries paying bills and says tariffs are a “beautiful thing” that bring in more dollars to the US.
Trump is signalling to his supporters that “he’s doing great things and the other country is paying the price. He likes that political angle,” said Gary Clyde Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “There is precedent for it, but Trump has raised the game to a new level and I don’t think any president, pre-war or post-war, has had this fixation.”
With Poland, Trump on June 12 pledged 1,000 new soldiers, but not the base or infrastructure. “The Polish government will build these projects at no cost to the US, the Polish government will pay for this,” he said, while also celebrating Poland’s purchases of fighter jets and natural gas.
Trump congratulated Poland for meeting the Nato defence spending target of 2% of gross domestic product, while criticising Germany’s 1.2%. “They should really be paying more than that,” he said of Germany.
He regularly frames Nato as a sort of bank, rather than each country individually spending on defence. “I raised over $100bn last year from countries that were not paying,” he said alongside Poland’s president.
Total Nato defence spending is projected to be $988bn in 2018, up from $911bn in 2016 when he was elected, the alliance’s data show. US defence spending makes up about one-third of that change. Trump threatened tariffs on Mexico if the country didn’t do more to curb the flow of migrants coming from Central America through Mexico to the US — after also cutting aid to the region.
“Paid for by them, they put 6,000 soldiers at their southern border,” Trump told Fox News in a phone interview on Friday.
Earlier this week, in an interview with ABC News, Trump said he’s saving money on new presidential aircraft that are in development. “We added things and I got $1.6bn off the price,” he said. The Air Force has credited Trump with leading negotiations for “over $1.4bn in savings,” although that meant planes that can carry fewer passengers and fly shorter distances.
Trump’s approach will loom large later this month, when he wants to meet Xi at the Group of 20 summit in Japan. A meeting between the two leaders isn’t confirmed, but Trump said on Friday it doesn’t matter if they talk because of billions being paid in tariffs.
For Hufbauer, Trump “fixates on the wrong objectives” with his focus on dollar values in a wide range of diplomatic efforts.
“This transactional approach to all sorts of things is a very strong theme with this presidency,” he said. “Before Trump came along, nobody would think that’s a very satisfactory measure of policy.”

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