Three weeks in, and the 24/7 news cycle is not helping anyone feel calm and informed about the second Trump presidency. One day, the US is threatening 25% trade tariffs on its friends and neighbours. The reasons offered by the White House are absurd, such as stopping fentanyl coming in across the Canadian border. In reality, an estimated 86% of the fentanyl coming into the US is smuggled in by US citizens, and the 43 pounds of fentanyl known to be coming into the US annually from Canada would fit comfortably into one piece of overhead luggage.

A media stampede has resulted as people (me included) wrote articles and/or opined on TV about the harms done by high tariffs to the economy and to consumers. There was much head shaking in editorials and elsewhere that the jobs created by firms relocating their operations or supply lines to the US to avoid the tariffs would be fewer than the jobs destroyed by the tariffs. What a waste of time and energy. Suddenly, those tariffs were off the table, for a month at least, yet other tariffs were waiting in the wings unless conditions X, Y, or Z are met. At the Superbowl yesterday, Trump confirmed that 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminium imports are now in train.

To be or not be? The US wants to annex Canada – or does it ? - and seize the Panama Canal – or does it? – and rename the Gulf Of Mexico and buy Greenland. Allegedly, the US is also keen to own Gaza, expel the Palestinians and build luxury hotels with a Mediterranean frontage. Is the Gaza plan being walked back, or is Trump doubling down? Both at once.When Trump is flooding the news agenda in this fashion, fact-checking yesterday’s weird/untrue/wildly exaggerated statement is almost beside the point because by then, the carnival will have moved on elsewhere.

After only three weeks, it is already exhausting. The media is being propelled into a sustained state of Attention Deficit Disorder. It hits the incredulity button one day, only to have to walk it back (somewhat, entirely) the next, or leap onwards to the next outlandish claim. Serious changes to legal rights and entitlements bob around among the frivolities. If having an informed public is the ultimate aim, then we have to find a different way of reporting on Donald Trump. We can’t continue to report his every utterance as gospel, even if the hullaballoo earns big audience ratings.

Amid Trump’s myriad examples of petty revenge, one thing we do know is that he aims to get coverage, and use the coverage to obtain leverage. Nate Silver recently likened Trump’s operational style to game theory, and to poker. The bluff is an inherent part of the process. The bluff is more formidable when Trump threatens to up the ante, because America has more reserves of economic and political power than any other country on the planet. Ask Colombia. That power imbalance makes it risky to call him out. And just as risky to provoke his ire by defending the principles under threat.

What has made the presidency of Donald Trump unique is his readiness to use those vast reserves of U.S. power against America’s allies and friends, even more so than against its enemies. Canada, Mexico, Denmark (and soon, reportedly) the European Union are in the firing line so far, in less than a month. As the American Prospect noted recently, the era when a US- led alliance of social democracies preached human rights and sought to spread the fruits of a benign form of capitalism around the world is over, probably for good. The US aims to dominate friend and foe alike.

As some analysts have also pointed out - instead of fostering respect for America’s self-professed democratic values, the White House now wants the rest of the world to fear it. In the meantime, how can the media avoid being lured into stampeding public opinion to Trump’s ultimate benefit? “We just reported what he said” to this President’s utterances is to lend credence to a daily stew of outright lies, outlandish kite-flying and serious threats to democracy. It turns objective reporting into a form of “ sane-washing.” Do we really have to give equal time to the argument for seizing the Panama Canal just because the US has suddenly gone troppo about the port terminals at both ends of the Canal being owned by a firm that, in turn, is owned by the richest man in Hong Kong?

Crazy talk

The “Is he crazy?” theme has long been a staple of Trump coverage. Learned editorials have cited Metternich and Richard Nixon as other examples of political notables who have advocated an appearance of “crazy” unpredictability as a political tactic. Trump belongs to the same tradition. That doesn’t make him a tactical genius, but it may help us to understand his methods.

If not crazy, then Trump is also commonly derided as being vain and stupid, with a limited attention span. Maybe so. Yet arguably, being really smart and knowing the detail of every portfolio is an overrated political attribute. As someone once said of George W. Bush, he has the gift of making stupid people think they are just as smart as their leaders. So does Trump, and - arguably – so does Christopher Luxon.

Conversely, relatively few people felt themselves to be as smart as Helen Clark or Jacinda Ardern, but after a while that gap began to grate among a majority of voters. The much touted “common touch” in politicians comes down to not making voters feel embarrassed by their own shortcomings. Trump makes the MAGA crowd feel appreciated, and they love him for it.

Calling The Bluff

Even if Trump’s bluff isn’t called, the threats will have lost some of their potency the second time around. Mexico and Canada are not going to pay a monthly toll in concessions every time that Trump threatens to impose tariffs. Alienating friends and humiliating allies is also not in a country’s best interests, long term – not that Trump will be losing sleep over that outcome.

The trouble that the world faces is that it can't all be bluff. To maintain a credible air of unpredictability, Trump has to follow through every now and then. Purely as a thought experiment, it may be worth trying to imagine the worst case scenario for this country if – sometime over the next four years – we get on his radar. What if Trump ever chooses to do a Canada on us, and target Australia and New Zealand?

Anthony Albanese is about to find out, since he is soon to make a telephone call begging Trump to give Australia an exemption from those 25% tariffs on steel and aluminium imports. If lining up to spend up to $A368 billion on the AUKUS pact doesn’t qualify the Aussies for clemency then New Zealand would clearly be wasting its breath trying to curry favour with the Trump administration, should we ever happen to get on his radar, in a bad way.

Theoretically the Trump attack lines might go something like this... Australia and New Zealand, they’re very beautiful countries and they say they’re America’s friends and allies, but have you noticed that they’re very, very dependent on China for trade?. This makes them vulnerable to the unseen pressure from China. I know that, you know that, they know that.

New Zealand is a beautiful country. I might build a hotel there sometime. But it spends a very, very small share of its GDP on defence, and it is well known to be China’s best friend in the Five Eyes security alliance. Just the other day, the Cook Islands – which is a New Zealand territory – was signing “a comprehensive strategic alliance” with China, and New Zealand claimed to be completely unaware that this was happening!

That can’t possibly be true, can it? If it was true, why would we want to have a country like that in the Five Eyes, when it claims that it doesn’t even know what’s going on in its own backyard. I don't know. I love Kiwis. I have them with breakfast some mornings at Mar-a-Lago. But I’d say that the country has gone to hell under the leadership of Jennifer Arden. It's very sad, so sad. Change has to happen. Big change. You know it, I know it, they know it.

So...what leverage does Trump currently have over us? Well, he could kick New Zealand – and Canada, too – out of the Five Eyes alliance. Trump could demand – as proof of our loyalty - that we reduce our trade dependency on China by oh, 25% by the end of the year. What would the pay-off be for the US from such a threat/bluff? In all likelihood, the coalition government would (a) scramble to join the AUKUS pact and then (b) buy many, many expensive weapons from US arms dealers, and offer this as proof to Washington that we’re really truly an American friend and dependable ally.

Hey, it's even possible that Christopher Luxon might even welcome being threatened by Trump. In the current domestic climate, Luxon cannot justify spending tens of billions of scarce dollars on US-made armaments unless this country faces an existential threat. We may have assumed in the past that such an existential threat would come from China, but right now, it's more likely to come from the Trump administration. One can hear Luxon saying: we didn’t want to do this, but what I would say to you is that these are the realities we must face up to, as a small trading nation.

I’m not saying this will happen. But it is a possible scenario and that alone is indicative of the changed world we live in. Thinking we can continue to brag about how we juggle China (on trade) and the US ( on defence and security) is just the sort of clever clogs talk likely to arouse this President’s ire.

Keeping calm

How do we retain a sense of national pride in this climate? Probably not by standing up to the US over Gaza in the fashion suggested on the weekend by Otago academic Robert Patman. Lecturing Trump and rapping him over the knuckles with the ruler of international law will achieve nothing from a man who has just imposed financial and travel sanctions on the International Criminal Court. It would invite retribution.

That doesn’t mean we have to sell out the Palestinians. We can stand up for our values and against the US complicity in the Gaza genocide in a more productive way by making ourselves a prominent contributor to a Reconstruction Fund for Gaza in unisoon with the UAE, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Lebanon. That’s where our diplomatic efforts in the Middle East now need to be focussed. Closer to home, expecting the US to be an attentive ally in the Pacific is a waste of time.. The “Pacific Way” of mutually respectful compromise is anathema to how this President operates.

Patman is right, though, about the need to stand up for the principles at stake, but not in a way likely to trigger reprisals. Basically...we need to avoid commenting on Trump’s daily absurdities, while keeping our eye on the US end game behind the rhetoric. For example: in the Middle East, Gaza is not going to be turned into a Riviera-style tourist destination, but Trump is dead serious about pulling Israel, the US and Saudi Arabia into a joint “peace” deal aimed at violently overthrowing the regime in Iran.

The Saudis were on the brink of signing up to that deal when Israel’s genocidal response to Hamas made impossible. Rebuilding in Gaza might be the sop to the Palestinians that would enable the Saudis to proceed with its wider goal of joining with Israel and the US in bringing about regime change in Tehran.

If Gaza is to be rebuilt it won’t be with US dollars. It will be with Saudi/UAE/Qatari money. We should be donating at least $10 million as a starting contribution, and joining Ireland – which last week donated a further 20 million euros (or roughly $NZ 36 million )to the Palesntinian cause - and Spain. which has raised its conbtribution to Palestine and to UNRWA to 50 million euros, or $NZ91 million. If we want to stand up for our principles on Gaza, money talks louder than words.

Footnote: As Nate Silver said recently of Trump: “ He’s not a bumbling idiot; sometimes he plays his cards wrong, but he understands one basic concept well: leverage..If you're willing to make a particular set of assumptions and treat international trade as a sort of poker game – assumptions that I don’t think are broadly rational but might be a good approximation for the blinkered way in which Trump ses foreign relations – then there’s a cold game-theoretical logic to his approach... In game theory terms, this isn’t mutually assured destruction or a game of chicken. A trade war would be very costly. But the costs aren’t infinite, and these countries [Canada, Mexico, Colombia] have more to lose.”

Townes Van Zandt’s poker tips

“Mr Mudd and Mr Gold” is not one of Townes Van Zandt’s best known tracks. The lyrics pack in too densely the metaphor of those who use poker strategies for power and personal gain. It helps to know the rules of five card stud to follow what’s happening, but the melody and Townes’ voice carry it off, regardless. And the punchline could not be more clear:

Now here what this story’s told

If you feel like mud you’ll end up gold

If you feel like lost you’ll end up found

So amigo, lay those raises down

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