Destroy the US economy and foreign relations in order to appease the class schadenfreude negative attention-seeking behavior of the alt-right base.
And Putin, who owns Trump.
He's been pretty consistent on his message about trade since his talk show appearances in the 80s. That is unheard of consistency for Trump, so I do believe he thinks he's doing the right thing here. The problem is its only a first order analysis.
He's likely thinking the military is powerful enough to function without help from allies, but ships need to refuel somewhere.
And saying that he's gonna exclude ZTE from US-Iran sanctions because that would cost China a lot of jobs. Is that consistency on trade as well? Did he run on China first policy?
China approved some new trademarks for Ivanka, and agreed to fund $500 million for a Trump-connected project in Asia. Just around the time Trump started talking about saving ZTE jobs.
Trump just wants bribes.
That was a perfectly valid and factually correct observation. HN downvotes are getting a bit ridiculous. You can't say anything, you'll get downvoted. I really really don't understand this. And it seems to be getting worse.
He can count on the UK, Poland and the Baltic and Scandinavian states as allies. Also on Romania in Eastern Europe, which provided facilities and the refueling station for the evacuation of Afghanistan during the Obama administration.