President Trump revealed himself to be a foreign policy ace with four straight diplomatic victories in a row and it's just Monday.
Late last week, Ric Grenell, President Trump's envoy for special missions, (otherwise known as 'barbarian handler') flew to Caracas and cut a deal with Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, complete with smiling pictures, to bring back six American hostages held there and force Maduro to take back Venezuela's large crop of illegal aliens, all in exchange for ... apparently nothing. We still don't know how that was done, or what, if anything other than status quo activities such as oil drilling contracts for Chevron or some kind of quasi recognition of Maduro as de facto president (following a nakedly stolen election) were held out as the carrot. But presumably, the example President Trump made of Colombia's mouthy president, Gustavo Petro, put a lot of regional players on notice that it's better to deal with Trump before he gets what he wants and then makes you cry 'uncle,' because he's going to get it either way. Even Maduro calculated his best odds and went with cooperation with Trump. A global pariah, he must have loved the attention, too. Even Maduro got something.
Next up, President Trump's very sharp Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, got the job of 'good cop,' paying a visit to Panama to get what President Trump needed from that friendly country. Rubio was polite and tactful, going to Mass with the locals first, which was clearly a hit in the devoutly Catholic isthmus state as he laid out the requests, iron fist in velvet glove. Panama's leaders are authentic conservatives and were probably easy to work with regarding Trump's demand that Chinese influence end around the canal, with Panama announcing that it would pull out of China's One Belt, One Road initiative (which its leftist predecessors got the country into); allow free passage for U.S. Navy ships through the canal, and plug the Darien gap in the country's south to cartels and illegals. All of those things are bound to be popular with the locals at home, particularly the last item which has wrought havoc on Panama's unique Native American communities as well as its fragile ecosystem, and brought crime and disorder everywhere else. Panama also benefits strongly from the China exit because China is a very humorless bill collector to countries that find themselves on the hook to its loans, and its infrastructure in exchange, as Ecuador found out the hard way, is to say the least, subpar. (See this item I wrote about here about how Ecuador got ensnared.) And in a dangerous world, with China's deepwater Navy expanding, you always want the big stick around to cross your canal. Letting the U.S. Navy cross for free is like a store owner offering free donuts to the local cops to ensure that they'll always be there when the bad guys come calling. In every case, Panama wins big, too.
It gets better. Monday, Mexico announced that it would station 10,000 National Guard troops on its northern border to intercept cartels, fentanyl and illegals, in exchange for President Trump suspending tariffs for 30 days -- obviously extendable with good performance.
You can bet there will be results from that one, and they will try as hard as they can with no excuses. It will be useful for the U.S. to learn what the Mexicans are capable of and what their weak spots are, which they might need help on later from the U.S. In exchange, the U.S. would step up surveillance of the illegal gun trade, which we already were doing but if this is what it takes to make them happy, sounds good.
More important, Mexico would also be spared the hard impact of tariffs which hit their economy much harder than ours given that most of their exports make their way here. Tariffs would make Mexico's products non-competitive with many other Latin states producing similar products without tariffs and they all know this -- I've heard this firsthand from trade officials in places like Peru, Colombia and Chile and they watch each other closely. The prized Mexican avocado crop will be saved.
Meanwhile, would Mexican citizens like to see the cartels defunded and gone? You bet they would -- and if it works out, Mexico's president, Claudia Sheinbaum, is bound to see a bounce in popularity. Mexico's economy will improve, investment will come in with less crime and Sheinbaum will have a lot more money to throw around on her greenie boondoggle projects. The short answer is that Mexico, too, is going to be a winner.
Last to the plate, Canada -- which also vows to dispatch 10,000 troops to its border to intercept fentanyl and illegals in exchange for a suspension of tariffs. They too would be more hurt by them than we would, which their leaders understood well, and stepped up to cut a deal, fast, to save their wobbly economy.
The lesson of Trump is, you want to trade with America's big market, you can't be a constant pinprick or problem with other areas of U.S. strategic interest. It was a masterly use of leverage and deal-making from Trump and surely America's enemies are taking note, flabbergasted. Although it was probably a little painful for the nations involved to have to handle, the real result is that not only will the U.S. be great again, they're going to be great again, too, stronger, richer, better positioned to make deals with everyone else their own way. It's called winning, and Trump's way of winning is win-win. Everyone else in this world is watching with fascination, adjusting their calculations accordingly.
Image: Screen shot from WFAA video, via YouTube