Author: Thomas Graham, Jr.

FRIENDS WITHOUT BENEFITS

David Bernell and Ambassador Thomas Graham (Retired)

January 2025

President Donald Trump campaigned on a promise of raising tariffs, and he seems ready to implement them. He stated soon after taking office that his administration will impose tariffs of 25 percent on goods from Canada and Mexico (and also 10 percent on goods from China). If implemented, these policies will be likely to please only the president and his staunch supporters and subordinates, who see tariffs as something that will bring prosperity and self-reliance. In reality, tariffs will mostly bring economic pain and political fallout. Consumers, companies that import or export goods to and from these countries, and the United States as a whole, along with its trading partners, will all suffer harmful consequences.

The economic hit will come in the form of higher prices not only of imported goods, but also their domestically produced equivalents, which can command a higher price due to diminished competition. Another impact will be the reduced availability of goods not produced in the United States (think avocados from Mexico). The Congressional Budget Office, as well as nonpartisan organizations such as the Peterson Institute for International Economics have done studies of the economic impacts that these tariffs would have: inflation, fewer jobs, and reduced GDP.

Trump states that tariffs are paid by foreign governments, but this is untrue. Canadian government agencies or companies do not pay the United States for the privilege of being able to sell their products here. Tariffs are paid to the U.S. government by companies that import goods, and they recover the costs by passing them along to customers. Consumers will therefore see price increases in places such as grocery stores (the US imports numerous agricultural products from Mexico and Canada), the gas pump (the largest supplier of foreign oil to the US is Canada, followed by Mexico), and car dealerships (automobile production is highly integrated across the both the northern and southern borders).

American tariffs will also harm our trading partners, putting people out of work and wreaking havoc on their economies as Americans reduce their purchases of Canadian and Mexican goods. These countries will also impose retaliatory tariffs, probably with some strategically placed on goods from states that voted for Trump: Florida citrus, steel from Pennsylvania, corn from the Midwest, Kentucky bourbon. American producers will see their sales to Canadian and Mexican customers drop considerably. The result will be a loss of income, jobs, and investment in industries all across the United States.

The economic consequences of Trump’s tariffs will be bad enough, but the bigger problem is likely to be the political fallout. The words and actions of the American president are harming relations with America’s allies and friends, who are the primary targets of Trump’s hostility and threats. (Trump has spoken quite well of Putin for many years, and once said that he “fell in love” with Kim Jung Il. Trump also doesn’t threaten to take any of their territory like he does a NATO ally.)

Trump has been making such threats for a while. During the campaign he not only promised numerous tariffs, he also derided America’s allies, stating that he would be fine with Putin doing “whatever the hell he wanted” to NATO countries if they didn’t “pay their bills” (Trump has repeatedly mischaracterized the commitment by NATO members to spend at least two percent of their GDP on defense as being delinquent on paying their bills to the U.S. if they haven’t met the target).

After the election, Trump began to speak about using the American military to forcibly take Greenland from Denmark (a NATO ally), and the Panama Canal Zone. He even suggested using “economic force” to make Canada part of the U.S. Energized MAGA supporters took this talk even further, going on social media to post maps showing a “greater” United States that includes these places. This bluster seemed to come out of nowhere, and has served primarily to antagonize countries that have had friendly relations with the United States.

Once Trump was back in the White House, he ramped things up even further. Speaking on video to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, he threatened tariffs on EU countries, saying that these nations treat the United States “very unfairly, very badly.” He also singled out Canada, saying “We have a tremendous deficit with Canada. We’re not going to have that anymore.” He then went on to taunt the country, saying “You can always become a state. And then, if you are a state, we won’t have a deficit. We won’t have to tariff you.”

On day seven of the new administration, conflict erupted with Colombia over deportations. When the President of Colombia refused to allow two U.S. military planes to land in his country, Trump said that the United States would immediately impose a 25 percent tariff on all Colombian imports and raise them to 50 percent the following week. In addition, he threatened banking and financial sanctions, along with a travel ban on Colombian government officials. The Colombian president hit back, saying that he would impose tariffs of 25 percent on U.S. imports. The two countries quickly settled their differences, but the Trump Administration said that it would leave the tariffs and sanctions “in reserve” to ensure that Colombia lives up to its commitments.

American foreign policy is being turned upside down by the Trump Administration. The United States is turning its hostility toward its historic friends and allies, countries that it has closely aligned with for decades. These connections have helped to keep the United States and its friends secure and prosperous. They have been grounded in institutions such as NATO, the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the World Trade Organization, and a host of other agreements and mutually cooperative actions.

Trampling on friendships and alliances, issuing repeated threats – these actions will have consequences. The clash with Colombia provides a warning to others and an example of what the future may hold. It has also taught the White House a lesson: react to any disagreement immediately and forcefully, issue threats, impose tariffs, and make opposition to American actions very costly. Doing this will cause others to back down quickly and get Trump what he wants while demonstrating his own power. The longer-term damage to the United States and its interests, however, are also likely to be very costly, making Americans worse off economically and isolating the United States from those who have been its best friends and trading partners.

The American people cannot expect other countries to tolerate Donald Trump and a U.S. government that continually throws its weight around, seeking to punish them for some harm (real or imagined) they have done us. Friends without any benefits will soon become no friends at all. In a world where Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea are increasingly aligned and share antipathy for the United States and the global order, and where war and upheaval rage in Ukraine and the Middle East, Donald Trump works toward driving America’s friends and allies away, while the Pentagon under Pete Hegseth focuses on gender issues and pursues the agenda of Fox News. The results may not be to our liking.

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Ambassador Thomas Graham Jr. is former acting director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency under President Clinton, and served as General Counsel of ACDA during the presidencies of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He is the author of several books on nuclear arms control, U.S. foreign policy, and American politics.

David Bernell is an Associate Professor in the School of Public Policy at Oregon State University. He is the author of Constructing US Foreign Policy: The Curious Case of Cuba, and The Energy Security Dilemma: US Policy and Practice. He also served in the Clinton Administration with the US Office of Management and Budget, and the US Department of the Interior.

You can find their work on Substack at Defending Democracy.

Ambassador Thomas Graham Jr. and David Bernell

January 12, 2024

Since Russia’s unprovoked, full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 22, 2022, the war has inflicted a high level of casualties on both sides, featured periodic nuclear weapon threats by Russia, and resulted in atrocities that include war crimes and other violations of international law by Russia’s armed forces. The invasion at first looked like a potential success for Russian President Vladimir Putin, but the valiant Ukrainian army drove hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers into an area along the eastern border that represents roughly 20 percent of the territory of Ukraine. The fighting has now bogged down in a stalemate. Naturally the world would like to see this war, with its massive suffering and horrifying Russian actions, come to an end.

This is a war that Ukraine, the United States and NATO cannot afford to lose to the dictator in the Kremlin. The Ukrainians are doing NATO’s job, and they are doing it at little expense to the alliance, weakening Russia and keeping it at bay as it seeks to harm the West, undermine democratic elections in the United States and beyond, and bring Putin’s sympathizers to power on both sides of the Atlantic. If Ukraine loses, the United States and its allies will find themselves in a very different place in the world, one they would not like. It would be a world at greater risk of conflict between NATO and Russia, with the Baltic states and perhaps Poland likely to be next on the Putin hit list. Such an outcome is not inevitable, but it is increasingly possible given the reckless Republican party policy of blocking the American pipeline of arms to Ukraine.

The history of Russian connection to and domination of Ukraine might suggest that Ukraine’s independence and ties to the West are not essential to the security of the United States and its allies. This may have been true in the past, as Russia’s well-documented domination and persecution of Ukraine go back centuries. In the last century alone, Ukraine was forcibly brought into the Soviet Union in the 1920s. Though the relationship became formalized by means of a separate Ukrainian Republic in the Soviet Union, and the Ukrainian Soviet Republic was even later granted its own separate recognition and membership in the United Nations after World War II, the domination and persecution never stopped. During the 1930s, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had carried out an enforced famine on the Ukrainian Republic by confiscating its grain crop each year to sell for foreign exchange. An estimated 3.9 million Ukrainians died of hunger in 1930-32 as a result. Ukrainian citizens, young and old, including children, died daily of hunger in the streets of Ukrainian cities while pleading for bread. Later, from 1936-38, Ukrainians made up a particularly prominent share of the nearly 700,000 people killed in Stalin’s campaign of political repression known as the Great Terror, or the Great Purge. During World War II, the principal Ukrainian resistance organization, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, fought against both the Nazis and the Soviets at different times, as Ukrainian nationalists believed that the Soviets were at least as bad as the Nazis, and maybe worse. After the war, Ukrainian resistance and nationalism were suppressed, placing Ukraine firmly under Soviet domination until 1991.

Ukraine became independent after the end of the Cold War, but the country continued to find itself a target of Russia. Upon its demise, the Soviet Union left 5,000 nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory, which Ukrainians wanted to keep to protect themselves from Russian invasion. Under great pressure from the United States and other Western powers who did not want to allow an additional nuclear weapons state under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Ukraine agreed to deliver these weapons to Russia pursuant to an international agreement known as the Budapest Memorandum. In exchange, the United States, the U.K., and Russia were to guarantee Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. At the time, the United States pledged that it would consider the Budapest Memorandum as carrying the force of a treaty.

Yet Russia continually interfered in Ukraine after the Cold War. It repeatedly sought to ensure the election of the Kremlin’s favored presidential candidates, force Ukraine away from greater political and economic connection to the European Union, and bring Ukraine back under Russian influence and control with political threats and the cutoff of natural gas supplies. And then, when Putin’s Russia went even further and carried out its invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014, and soon after fomented, led, and supplied an armed rebellion in the Donbas region of Ukraine, the United States and the U.K. essentially ignored their pledges under the Budapest Memorandum. They did so again when Russia began its all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Most significantly, the United States did not observe its “treaty-like” obligations. 

There can be no doubt about Ukraine’s determination to stay out of Russia’s grasp this time. To the great surprise of most countries, Ukraine, with the help of huge Western arms shipments, principally from the United States, was able to blunt Russia’s invasion and even drive it back out of some of the territory it seized in 2022. But the West also held back more than necessary, daunted by Putin’s repeated threats to use nuclear weapons, however incredible those claims should have been. So Russia still occupies much of Ukrainian territory along the Russian border. The situation at this time appears unlikely to change, and has been characterized as a stalemate, with little territory changing hands over the past year. Putin has no interest in ending the war, and considering Ukraine’s recent and historical experience with Russia, it would be most unlikely that Ukraine would ever reach a peace agreement with Russia under any terms other than Ukraine’s total victory because that is the only way it can ensure its future security.

As a result, the most likely outcomes at this time appear to be these: a Russian victory; a long, financially costly, gruesome stalemate; or victory by Ukraine (and NATO).

A Russian victory is ever more likely to be the ultimate result if the Republican Party in the United States is successful in blocking American military aid to Ukraine. Though it is unclear whether additional countries in NATO would adopt this policy, it is highly unlikely that the level of U.S. armaments could be replaced. This would make an eventual Russian victory, if not inevitable, then very much expected, despite the incredible bravery, patriotism, and military capability that the Ukrainians have demonstrated.

This would undoubtedly open the door for Putin to come closer to achieving his objective of weakening NATO, or even bringing about its demise, with the Baltic states and Poland as his next potential targets. To say this would be bad for America and its allies vastly understates the impact. It would be a short- and long-term catastrophe, placing Europe in the shadow of an aggressive and ascendant Russia, and establishing the United States as an unreliable friend and ally. It would (or should) also establish the Republican Party as modern-day quislings.

A second possibility is that the United States and NATO might overcome domestic resistance and continue to supply Ukraine with arms shipments. This might be enough to save Ukraine from defeat, but the last two years of conflict have indicated that it is not enough for Ukraine to win, unless the Biden administration finally commits to Ukraine’s victory, not just its survival. Short of that, the result would probably, almost certainly, be a long, highly expensive and demoralizing stalemate between Russia and Ukraine. This would be bad for Russia, but Putin has such intense control over his country and its citizens at this point that he could probably live with the situation as he watched Ukraine slowly deteriorate, while the United States and NATO continued to deplete their resources and lose faith in their own ability to do anything more than prolong a horrific war. This situation would also most certainly benefit China, whose economic power and political strength would allow it greater global influence, while keeping Russia propped up.

Lastly, there is the possibility of a Ukrainian victory, with a settlement that restores the status quo before Putin’s military hostility toward Ukraine began in 2014. This would be the only fair and honorable outcome for Ukraine, the only outcome that would ensure its security, and the most satisfactory end for the United States, NATO, and a more reliable world order that would restore the rule of law at least to some significant degree.

Of course, the conditions required to achieve this end will be difficult to meet. The first is that there has to be far greater U.S. and NATO military support for Ukraine, with a major influx of even more weapons, training, intelligence, and logistical support. Further, it might even require some level of more direct involvement, including American “boots on the ground,” well beyond the handful of special forces already sent to Ukraine. This would make the war belong to the United States and NATO as much as it does to Ukraine.

The second condition, even with a defeated Russia, would have to be assurance that a Russian invasion of Ukraine would never happen again. In the wake of the failure of the Budapest Memorandum, there is only one way to achieve that: bring Ukraine into NATO so that it is protected under Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, by which an attack on one is an attack on all.

The risk associated with this course of action is great, including a wider war with Russia that would inevitably involve American casualties. But the risk of failure in Ukraine is also great, with a weakened West and an ascendant Russia. The course of action is clear if the United States hopes to successfully end this horror show, and make the world a safer, more democratic place. It also would send a powerful signal to China that the United States is not to be intimidated. Honor and global security come at a price, but the question remains whether the United States and its allies can or will make this commitment.