Two and a Half Years to Go: We Look at Impeachment, and the Consequences
Part 1 — Trump’s Greatest Unintended Successes
Believe it or not, some of Donald Trump’s biggest successes haven’t benefited America at all. They’ve benefited America’s allies.
Not because he wanted to — because he tried to bend them to his will, and it backfired. Exhibit A is our closest friend and neighbor, Canada. Canada and the U.S. always had a trade relationship that tilted toward America, but Canada got its share too, like a little brother getting big brother’s leftovers, but also big brother’s protection.
That ended with two things: Donald Trump’s poorly thought out, and illegal, tariff policy, and the rise of a Canadian banker named Mark Carney. Suddenly both countries had a non-politician in charge, one a con man, the other a banker. The banker saw through the con, and the north and south settled into a whiskey war. Funny thing is, you can still buy Canadian whiskey down here, they’re the ones who pulled the Kentucky and Tennessee stuff off their shelves. And where did all the good maple syrup go? My pancakes just aren’t the same with Aunt Jemima.
Long story short, Canadians stopped coming south as tourists, there went the tourist trade in Seattle and up the Eastern Seaboard. But hold on, you say, Americans are still going to Canada. Sure. And while we’re up there, Trump, ever wonder where the electricity keeping Melania’s Penthouse warm actually comes from? The Northeast leans hard on Quebec and Ontario for hydro and nuclear power.
But that’s just window dressing. Here’s what Canada has actually done because of Trump’s policies: they’re building pipelines east to west instead of south, so they can sell oil to other nations instead of us. They’ve brokered better deals to sell steel and aluminum overseas, so they’re no longer dependent on U.S. buyers. Beer lovers take note, bottles only now. Their national security alliances are shifting too: submarines from Germany, outfitted with electronics and systems no longer tied into U.S. military networks. Fighter jets from Sweden’s Saab instead of Boeing and Lockheed.
And Trump is countering the Boeing losses by making deals with China. China? That’s our supreme deal-maker, working with a deck of 47 cards.
So here’s the point: when the United States became an unreliable partner, other democracies adapted. Canada diversified its trade. Canada built out east-west energy. Canada started buying from Europe. Canada strengthened its own manufacturing.
How’s that tariff thing going, by the way? I keep getting Super PAC emails from Trump asking if I want my “cut” of the tariffs he’s collected, the same funds he’s been ordered to return. All it’ll cost me is another fifty-dollar contribution and a thank-you-sucker.
But back to the good things Trump has accomplished.
**China.** Trump’s big trade war tariffs on China were meant to punish, punish and get revenge, because apparently “negotiate” wasn’t in the playbook. He wanted to win the war, bring jobs back to the U.S., and massively redirect global supply chains. Problem is, when you don’t have the infrastructure to back that up, you lose and someone else wins. Vietnam was the big winner. We were the big weiner.
Companies didn’t fully reshore to the U.S. they moved to lower-tariff countries, and Vietnam’s exports to us boomed in electronics, apparel, furniture, and more. Vietnam overtook China outright in categories like laptops and game consoles, and Chinese firms started assembling there themselves just to dodge the tariffs. That accelerated Vietnam’s industrialization, its foreign investment, its whole economy. Malaysia, Thailand, India, and Mexico picked up similar gains. And don’t forget, Trump still has to pay back all those illegal tariffs he collected. From us. Not them. Us.
Trump’s bullying of China created a “China+1” strategy that supercharged the competition. Vietnam and the rest became more attractive manufacturing hubs, less dependent on any single partner, while we got higher consumer prices and disrupted supply chains instead of a manufacturing renaissance.
**NATO and the allies.** When America weaponized trade, everybody else built new networks. Trump spent years calling NATO allies freeloaders, threatening to withhold protection, demanding they pay up. So they did, Poland, the Baltics, and the rest of Europe ramped up defense budgets, bought new equipment, built up their own capability.
The backfire: less dependence on U.S. security guarantees, and a boost for European defense industries as countries looked to intra-European or non-U.S. suppliers. Trump accelerated Europe’s push toward “strategic autonomy”, joint European fighter and missile-defense programs that don’t have a single American bolt in them. The allies did exactly what he demanded, spent more on their own defense, and in doing so became less beholden to us long-term. Same story as Canada: squeeze an ally hard enough, and it doesn’t collapse, it just stops needing you.
**Climate.** Trump’s exit from the Paris Agreement and his general disdain for multilateral deals left a leadership vacuum. The EU stepped into it, advancing its own Green Deal and slapping carbon tariffs on imports from countries that won’t clean up their act, a tax that hits American exporters right along with everyone else. China, ever the self-interested opportunist, positioned itself as the champion of global climate cooperation, and now sells the world the solar panels and batteries America decided it didn’t need to build. Same pattern, third time: we walked away from the table, and somebody else picked up the check and the leverage that came with it.
So where does that leave us? Still a powerful country, but no longer the feared superpower we once were. Little Iran even took a title away from us at the Strait of Hormuz.
So what has Trump actually accomplished in his second term, grand old 47? He’s out to dominate the world, not king, but world emperor, and what he’s getting back is a redesigned world that feels increasingly comfortable telling him to bugger off. From a global point of view, good going, Donald. Maybe we should keep you in office a bit longer.
Canada didn’t fall apart when the ground shifted under it. It adapted. Neither did NATO. Neither did the EU. Worth remembering that, we’ll come back to it before this series is done.
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**Two and a Half Years to Go: We Look at Impeachment, and the Consequences**
Part 1 — Trump’s Greatest Unintended Successes
Part 2 — The Impeachment Trap
Part 3 — Governing vs. Revenge
Part 4 — Winning 2028
