The Newest "Ugly American" May Be the Dumbest Ever
Trump's tariffs and aid cuts could boost China and Russia globally while Project 2025 seeks to return us to an era of social, political, medical and environmental crises. It's an ugly time in America.
The term, “The Ugly American” first made its appearance through the title of a 1958 book which offered a thinly fictionalized chronicle of American diplomatic insensitivity, ineptness and bungling in Southeast Asia.
We are now entering a new “Ugly American” era under Donald Trump, his MAGA minions and Project 2025 . In some ways, it’s also quickly becoming the “Dumb as Rocks” American era. Consider today’s response to Trump’s tariffs by The Wall Street Journal, certainly no fount of liberalism. Its editorial board labeled Trump’s decision to hit Mexico and Canada with significant tariffs as potentially “one of the dumbest in history.”
“The U.S. willingness to ignore its treaty obligations, even with friends, won’t make other countries eager to do deals,” the board wrote. “Maybe Mr. Trump will claim victory and pull back if he wins some token concessions. But if a North American trade war persists, it will qualify as one of the dumbest in history.”
Not just “ugly,” mind you, but “dumb” ugly.
Hitting our allies and other countries with tariffs, potentially sparking trade wars and reducing aid for humanitarian efforts globally, another biggie that came out today, opens the way for counties that most oppose our way of life — China and Russia — to gain stronger footholds worldwide. Meanwhile, the MAGA drive to trash societal corrections that have taken place in the U.S. for almost 100 years is a push that aims to return us to the "Father Knows Best" era of the 1950s.
While that decade is often idealized as a period of prosperity and tranquility, its dark underpinnings included social, political, medical and environmental crises that served to ignite the cathartic upheavals of the 1960s and beyond that brought us to a better, more moral, more forgiving and safer place as a country.
Let’s look a little closer at the 1950s, taking a page from Heather Cox Richardson’s and Rich Galant’s fine Substack columns outlining the effects of past history on our present era.
The 1950s was a time when many white men — and perhaps, most —didn’t support civil rights for Black Americans or expanded roles for women beyond their role as homemakers, Meanwhile, homosexual individuals faced pervasive societal condemnation, legal penalties and institutionalized discrimination. Any deviations from the existing norms were aggressively discouraged.
How aggressively? In 1955, Emmett Till, at age 14, was brutally murdered in Mississippi and the men charged were acquitted by an all-white jury. In 1956, a group of Southern lawmakers signed the "Southern Manifesto," vowing resistance to racial integration while a 1958 Gallup poll found that only 1% of Southern whites and 5% of whites outside the South approved of interracial marriage.
McCarthyism and the “Red Scare” reached a fever pitch between 1950 and 1954.
In 1952, the U.S. suffered a polio outbreak that killed more than 3,000 and left hundreds of children paralyzed. Thalidomide, introduced in the 1950s to treat morning sickness in pregnant women, led to severe birth defects. And pervasive smog in Los Angeles and New York spurred asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, heart attacks and strokes.
Okay, now let’s let Trump take us even further back in time, which is apparently where his heart lies. He has repeatedly expressed admiration for the trade policies of President William McKinley in the 1900s. While in Congress, McKinley authored the Tariff Act of 1890 and often, like Trump, referred to himself as the "Tariff Man."
While American businessmen reaped huge profits from those tariffs, expanding the “Gilded Age” into the early 1900s, the profits came at the expense of American workers and the poor. They sparked a sharp decline in trade overall, and were blamed for the rising cost of clothing and other items.
Here’s what The New York Times said after McKinley’s tariff bill took effect: “It is no longer necessary to meet theories with theories. Let the facts, which are multiplying every day, tell who it is that pays the onerous tariff taxes.
“They will answer that the American people pay these taxes and that the burden of them rests most heavily upon the poor, inasmuch as there are very few of the necessities of life the prices of which are not increasing on account of the McKinley tariff,” the Times story added. One retailer quoted by the Times back then said his prices increases “will be in the neighborhood of 10 percent.”
Sound familiar to what we’re hearing now from retailers?
In the 1960s and beyond we moved away from the troubles of the 1950s. The civil rights movement emerged to confront racial segregation and discrimination, leading to significant legislative changes. Second-wave feminism challenged traditional gender roles, advocating for women's rights and equality.
In 1961, Illinois became the first state to decriminalize homosexuality by repealing its anti-sodomy laws. And in 1969, the Stonewall Riots in New York City are widely considered the catalyst for the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.
There’s no longer life-threatening smog in New York City, vaccines have ended the threat of significant polio and measles outbreaks, students have won the right to protest political actions on their campuses, and our economic aid is slowing the rise of HIV and other infectious diseases worldwide.
Are we going to backslide on all that progress?
Soon, it may be time to take to the streets with major protests, to fight Trump’s overreach in the courts and to aggressively support and vote into office representatives who face up to the moral and ethical standards we’ve held dear since 1776. But what occurred on Nov. 5 won’t be easy to fix, and we likely won’t see early progress. Is it worth the effort? Are we up to it? What do you think?
Reg, if you haven't read this article by David Honig, you need to. He's a legit source - I checked.
The best, most cogent and elegantly simple explanation into the inexplicably destructive negotiating processes of the president,by Prof. David Honig of Indiana University.
Everybody I know should read this accurate and enlightening piece...
“I’m going to get a little wonky and write about Donald Trump and negotiations. For those who don't know, I'm an adjunct professor at Indiana University - Robert H. McKinney School of Law and I teach negotiations. Okay, here goes.
Trump, as most of us know, is the credited author of "The Art of the Deal," a book that was actually ghost written by a man named Tony Schwartz, who was given access to Trump and wrote based upon his observations. If you've read The Art of the Deal, or if you've followed Trump lately, you'll know, even if you didn't know the label, that he sees all dealmaking as what we call "distributive bargaining."
Distributive bargaining always has a winner and a loser. It happens when there is a fixed quantity of something and two sides are fighting over how it gets distributed. Think of it as a pie and you're fighting over who gets how many pieces. In Trump's world, the bargaining was for a building, or for construction work, or subcontractors. He perceives a successful bargain as one in which there is a winner and a loser, so if he pays less than the seller wants, he wins. The more he saves the more he wins.
The other type of bargaining is called integrative bargaining. In integrative bargaining the two sides don't have a complete conflict of interest, and it is possible to reach mutually beneficial agreements. Think of it, not a single pie to be divided by two hungry people, but as a baker and a caterer negotiating over how many pies will be baked at what prices, and the nature of their ongoing relationship after this one gig is over.
The problem with Trump is that he sees only distributive bargaining in an international world that requires integrative bargaining. He can raise tariffs, but so can other countries. He can't demand they not respond. There is no defined end to the negotiation and there is no simple winner and loser. There are always more pies to be baked. Further, negotiations aren't binary. China's choices aren't (a) buy soybeans from US farmers, or (b) don't buy soybeans. They can also (c) buy soybeans from Russia, or Argentina, or Brazil, or Canada, etc. That completely strips the distributive bargainer of his power to win or lose, to control the negotiation.
One of the risks of distributive bargaining is bad will. In a one-time distributive bargain, e.g. negotiating with the cabinet maker in your casino about whether you're going to pay his whole bill or demand a discount, you don't have to worry about your ongoing credibility or the next deal. If you do that to the cabinet maker, you can bet he won't agree to do the cabinets in your next casino, and you're going to have to find another cabinet maker.
There isn't another Canada.
So when you approach international negotiation, in a world as complex as ours, with integrated economies and multiple buyers and sellers, you simply must approach them through integrative bargaining. If you attempt distributive bargaining, success is impossible. And we see that already.
Trump has raised tariffs on China. China responded, in addition to raising tariffs on US goods, by dropping all its soybean orders from the US and buying them from Russia. The effect is not only to cause tremendous harm to US farmers, but also to increase Russian revenue, making Russia less susceptible to sanctions and boycotts, increasing its economic and political power in the world, and reducing ours. Trump saw steel and aluminum and thought it would be an easy win, BECAUSE HE SAW ONLY STEEL AND ALUMINUM - HE SEES EVERY NEGOTIATION AS DISTRIBUTIVE. China saw it as integrative, and integrated Russia and its soybean purchase orders into a far more complex negotiation ecosystem.
Trump has the same weakness politically. For every winner there must be a loser. And that's just not how politics works, not over the long run.
For people who study negotiations, this is incredibly basic stuff, negotiations 101, definitions you learn before you even start talking about styles and tactics. And here's another huge problem for us.
Trump is utterly convinced that his experience in a closely held real estate company has prepared him to run a nation, and therefore he rejects the advice of people who spent entire careers studying the nuances of international negotiations and diplomacy. But the leaders on the other side of the table have not eschewed expertise, they have embraced it. And that means they look at Trump and, given his very limited tool chest and his blindly distributive understanding of negotiation, they know exactly what he is going to do and exactly how to respond to it.
From a professional negotiation point of view, Trump isn't even bringing checkers to a chess match. He's bringing a quarter that he insists of flipping for heads or tails, while everybody else is studying the chess board to decide whether its better to open with Najdorf or Grünfeld.”
— David Honig
The only reason to look back on the Fifties with nostalgia was the victory of the Dodgers over the Yankees in the World Series. But we don’t even have to go back to 1955. The Dodgers just beat the Yankees again. America has zero chance of becoming great under Donald Trump.