With Trump, the Chaos Is the Point

U.S. President Donald Trump's foreign policy is chaotic. This may be by accident or else the result of stupidity. But it is also partially by design. In his ghost-written books about business, Trump describes the benefits of keeping the other side off guard with unexpected negotiating tactics.
Similarly, beyond the world of business negotiations, Trump believes in the "madman theory" of foreign policy, in which being less predictable helps him gain concessions because other foreign leaders do not know how credibly to take his threats. In other words, the chaos is part of the policy.
The world has seen this play out over the first eight weeks of Trump's new term in office.
On tariffs, Trump threatened Canada and Mexico, with which he renegotiated a free trade deal during his first term, with a blanket 25 percent tariff. He has now backed down twice in two months on following through, once at the very last moment and once after having briefly imposed the import duties. The uncertainty this has created with regard to the North American business environment has led to lower consumer confidence, declining U.S. stock markets and concerns about a potential recession.
Meanwhile, Trump has slowly ratcheted up tariffs on China, threatened the European Union with far-reaching trade restrictions and moved to increase tariffs on metal imports, resulting in counter-tariffs and popular anger targeting U.S. businesses all across the globe.
Is Trump hoping to use these tariffs to raise revenue or to move manufacturing back into the United States? Or alternatively, does he hope the threat of tariffs will change other countries' behavior before he actually has to impose them? Nobody knows. Trump has claimed all three competing rationales at various points, adding to the maelstrom.
The uncertainty is not restricted to trade. On the war in Ukraine, Trump opened direct talks with Moscow and directed the U.S. to vote against a United Nations resolution condemning Russia for the invasion. Later that week, Trump appeared to change course and invited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the White House to sign a deal on Ukraine's critical minerals.
That deal was canceled after the two leaders' disastrous Oval Office press conference, leading Trump to suspend military aid and intelligence-sharing that the U.S. has provided to Kyiv since the February 2022 invasion. He then had U.S. negotiators meet with their Ukrainian counterparts in Saudi Arabia, where they agreed on a potential ceasefire deal.
As of this writing, military assistance and intelligence-sharing with Ukraine has resumed, and Trump is now floating the imposition of hard-hitting sanctions on Russia to get Moscow to go along with the ceasefire.
Foreign leaders cannot just plan for facing Trump's worst possible policies. Rather they must be ready for policies that never stop changing and even reversing.
On Venezuela policy, Trump's special envoy Richard Grenell traveled to Caracas in late January to meet with President Nicolas Maduro, who blatantly stole the country's presidential election last year and was the target of a "maximum pressure" campaign seeking regime change during Trump's first term.
As a result of Grenell's visit, Maduro agreed to accept Venezuelan migrants deported back to the country from the U.S., in exchange for an implicit guarantee that the Trump administration would not reimpose oil sanctions that former President Joe Biden had stopped enforcing as part of his own diplomatic efforts to ensure that last year's election would be more free and fair.
A few weeks later, however, Trump reversed course, revoking a special license that had allowed Chevron to drill in the country and giving the company just 30 days to wind down operations. Yet, late last week, Maduro began accepting deportation flights again, suggesting another quiet under-the-table deal had been reached. Then over the weekend, Trump deported Venezuelan citizens he accused of being members of Tren de Ara...