Trump wakes up to reality: A deal is a deal

Washington: The “America First” President who vowed to extricate the US from onerous overseas commitments appears to be warming up to the view that when it comes to global agreements, a deal’s a deal.

From Nafta to the Iran nuclear agreement to the Paris climate accord, President Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric is colliding with the reality of governing. Despite repeated pledges to rip up, renegotiate or otherwise alter them, the US has yet to withdraw from any of these economic, environmental or national security deals, as Mr Trump’s past criticism turns to tacit embrace of several key elements of US foreign policy.

The administration says it is reviewing these accords and could still pull out of them. Yet with one exception an Asia-Pacific trade deal that already had stalled in Congress, Trump’s administration quietly has laid the groundwork to honour the international architecture of deals it has inherited.

It’s a sharp shift from the days when Mr Trump was declaring the end of a global-minded America that negotiates away its interests and subsidises foreigners’ security and prosperity. Even as Mr Trump railed on Thursday against the North American Free Trade Agreement, there was little indication that he was actively pushing for wholesale changes.

As a candidate, Mr Trump threatened to jettison the pact with Mexico and Canada unless he could substantially renegotiate it in America’s favour. “The fact is, Nafta, whether it’s Mexico or Canada, is a disaster for our country,” Mr Trump said on Thursday during an event on steel imports. Of a dispute with Canada over dairy exports, he added: “We’re not going to let it happen.”

Yet Trump’s administration has been focused on marginal changes that would preserve much of the existing agreement, according to draft guidelines that Mr Trump’s trade envoy sent to Congress. To the dismay of Nafta critics, the proposal preserves a controversial provision that lets companies challenge national trade laws through private tribunals.

Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University, said Mr Trump may be allowing himself to argue in the future that existing deals can be improved without being totally discarded.

“That allows him to tell his base that he’s getting a better deal than Bush or Obama got, and yet reassure these institutions that it’s really all being done with a nod and a wink, that Trump doesn’t mean what he says,” Mr Brinkley said.

So far, there’s been no major revolt from Mr Trump supporters, despite their expectation he would be an agent of disruption.

This week’s reaffirmations of the status quo came via secretary of state Rex Tillerson’s certification of Iran upholding its nuclear deal obligations and the administration delaying a decision on whether to withdraw from the Paris climate accord.

Mr Trump had called the Iran deal the “worst” ever, and claimed climate change was a hoax. But the Trump administration is only reviewing these agreements.