Trump Wants To Bully The World, The State Of American Soft Power Puts It All At Risk
As President Trump throws tantrums and attempts to force his will on nations across the world, the impotence of US influence globally is showing the limits of United States influence and dependency abroad.
President of Mexico Claudia Sheinbaum pushed back against tariff threats by the Trump administration on Friday morning. (Photo: Secretaría de Cultura Ciudad de México from México, CC BY 2.0)
It should come as no surprise that President Trump has hit the ground running in the first two weeks of his second term. In fact, to those paying attention during the Trump campaign, he and his new administration are doing exactly as they promised: inflicting mass damage to the State apparatus through an onslaught of executive orders, memorandums, and news pressers. Whether legal or not, the parameters of our institutions are being stretched to tearing, the norms of Liberal government crashing down around us as the entire charade comes to a climax in the rampant greed and self-indulgence of the new United States regime.
It seems that not only the US Progressives were paying attention, either. Looking back to the days leading up to his inauguration, Trump made a public relations debacle in his accusations toward Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino of allowing Chinese military control and privilege over the Panama Canal. “American ships are being severely overcharged and not treated fairly in any way, shape or form, and that includes the United States Navy. And above all, China is operating the Panama Canal. And we didn’t give it to China, we gave it to Panama, and we’re taking it back.” Trump said at the time, providing no evidence for this and following up with threats of interventionism in the region to “reclaim” the canal from alleged Chinese management. In a statement Thursday, President Mulino responded once more in force to dispute and discredit the faceless claims: “I cannot negotiate, much less open, a process of negotiation on the canal,” he said “That is sealed. The canal belongs to Panama.”
In Colombia, where US military planes carrying shackled deportees were refused landing in the country last week, President Gustavo Petro emphasized human dignity and rights in his response to Trump’s bullying. “A migrant,” he explained, “is not a criminal and must be treated with the dignity that a human being deserves. That is why I returned the US military planes that were carrying Colombian migrants." In emphasis of this, he offered his own presidential plane to aid in deportations before pivoting to challenge the sanctions regime of the new administration with a blanket 25%-tariff on all US products. “Your blockade doesn’t scare me,’ Petro stated, promising to match the Trump administration’s threat of a 50%-tariff as well as declaring Colombia as open to the world for fair and free trade.
Similarly, tomorrow, February 1st, the 25%-tariffs on all Mexican and Canadian goods are set to go into effect. Mexico, like Panama and Colombia, does not intend to simply allow Trump to steamroll regional trade and diplomacy. In a statement by Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Friday morning, she explained , “we have a plan A, plan B and plan C for whatever the United States government decides. We're prepared for any scenario. We've been prepared for months.” Clearly, the country does not fear tomorrow’s threat of a universal 25%-tariff by the Trump administration. The foreign Ministry and their President have wisely taken the President in the North seriously in his statements and intentions, studiously following the telegraphed blows from the United States with the diplomacy and precision of a leader well-experienced in the realpolitik of the US-led “rules-based international order.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio heading to Panama and other Latin American countries as his first diplomatic mission tells us that the US has blinked. The threat of a hard power intervention showing itself as the tantrum it was and still not being enough to sway a country which could normally be easily managed through the velvet glove of diplomacy and a few $billion in economic aid. And it would be ignorant to think that Presidents Petro and Sheinbaum were oblivious to that reality in the moment, that any country could observe the outrageous opening salvo at Panama and see it as anything but a weak country with no political sway outside of the economic dependents the US calls “allies.”
Looking to Israel and Canada underlines this point perfectly. In terms of the former, we all remember the successful reining in of Israel by the Trump administration in the days leading up to his inauguration. In a flexing of US soft power, Trump was able to utilize diplomacy and economic threats to force a ceasefire in Gaza before he was ever legally empowered to do so. It was an honestly shocking opening move by the incoming administration, an easy win against the outgoing Democrats who had enabled the worst impulses of Prime Minister Netanyahu and his far-right coalition government. Considering the global support this garnered - if not for Trump himself but for the possibility of a peace deal at all - it isn’t unreasonable to assume that this emboldened the incoming President, setting the stage for the slew of sanctions and tariffs which followed shortly thereafter.
As for Canada, we have seen for ourselves how quick the government is to bend the knee to the outrageous demands of the US to stop all fentanyl crossing the Northern Border. Ignoring that fentanyl smuggling across both borders has been falling year-over-year, that only two pounds of the substance were interdicted at the US-Canada border in 2023, and that the primary driver of fentanyl smuggling into the US is at the hands of US citizens, the claim that any national security interest is at stake regarding smuggling from the north is without merit whatsoever. Despite this, Ottawa announced Wednesday that they would be launching a “fentanyl crackdown” across the nation in a bid to block the coming tariffs, recommitting to their border militarization policy (announced at the same time as the Israel-Gaza Ceasefire was finalized on the 15th) including Blackhawk helicopters, unmanned drones, and $1.3billion of Canadian tax dollars to ameliorate Trump’s inclinations.
Like a schoolyard bully, Trump is swinging at anyone and everyone in a bid to claim space in a world which has shifted exponentially in the four years since he was last in office; attempting to Lyndon “Big Dick” Johnson his way across global affairs in total ignorance of the supreme weakness of the US on the world stage. The difference between the countries above couldn’t be clearer. On one hand you have an effective soft power relationship, on the other you have only threats of military intervention. These are the limits that the Trump administration is facing as it charges blindly into fight after fight.
In fact, the successes with Israel and Canada underline this perfectly: in a multi-polar world, you can only threaten those who you have direct influence and control over. Mexico is not beholden to the US in the ways it was in the latter half of the 20th Century, does not need to depend upon our goodwill to ensure business locates and grows within Mexico. We can no longer get by through sanctions, tariffs, and political maneuverings like we once did, can not depend on our military to back the supremacy of the US-dollar in a world which is no longer wholly dependent upon it. Countries around the world are not afraid of organizations like BRICS, do not buy the fearmongering of Western powers who only seek to entrench their own economic influence at the expanse of the entire developing world. Today, our companies move south freely and without qualm, seeking the cheaper labor force and better international relations of Mexico to grow their profits rather than pay ever more in taxes to import goods and materials to the US. Mexico, can hold our companies, their profits, and their access to materials hostage, nationalize them if the US continues to stir the pot. What, at the end of the day, can the US do when Mexico will lack very little due to access to Southeast Asian Markets and Latin American Allies.
Whether the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States/La Comunidad de Estados Latinoamericanos y Caribeños (CELAC) can pull itself past the “systematic opposition from Member Countries that have privileged other principles and interests” which derailed the proposed meeting of the organization on Thursday, we can only guess. For now, it seems that countries will need to create smaller coalitions as they stand up to waning US influence in the region.
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