President Trump’s Excellent Deal

Just yesterday, March 29, Donald Trump made a highly important and encouraging announcement: America is going to buy up to forty icebreakers from Finland. That’s twenty times as many as Canada agreed to buy, but that’s for another piece.

One should never underestimate Alexander Stubb, President of Finland. Fluent in five languages, with an earned PhD, he is a hockey player and an Ironman, and studied in the US on a golf scholarship. A deep thinker and influential centrist writer, he’s the real deal.

Donald Trump also plays golf.

So, the two presidents had breakfast, played a round of golf, went for lunch, and announced the deal. Which is a big deal.

Now, we know that with the Donald there’s no such thing as a forever deal, not even in the sacred realm of matrimony. But such a large and public pronouncement may be one of the most important things to cross Trump’s lips in weeks, maybe months, maybe more.

Why?

Because America could build its own icebreakers. It has before, it could do so again. There’s general agreement that the Finns, the Koreans, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Germans, and the Indians own nearly the entire shipbuilding industry, with the Americans holding only a tiny slice of an industry the entirety of which they used to share with the British.

So, why didn’t Trump simply announce that America was going to build forty, or eighty, or a thousand, icebreakers in its own shipyards? Well, there are several reasons, valid ones, which make an important point about international trade and interconnectedness.

First, the Finns are very good at building icebreakers, a very specialized business, currently producing about 80% of worldwide tonnage. They have the yards, the skilled workers, the knowhow, the supply chains, and everything else you need to create these unique vessels. America could do the same, given time, but America wants these vessels in the near term, not decades from now. You don’t just snap your fingers and create a complex industry.

Second, in a deal worth over nine billion dollars, the Finns have bought sixty-four F-35s from the US. Building fighter jets is something at which the US excels. They have the plants, the skilled workers, the knowhow, the supply chains, and everything else you need to build tomorrow’s warhawks. Finland could also build its own fighter jets, just as their neighbour Sweden does, but they want these jets now, not decades from now. You don’t just snap your fingers and create a complex industry.

Third, the Finns have been working this deal for years. Quietly, methodically, painstakingly. President Stubb, unlike some of his counterparts, knows the value of the whole team working quietly and effectively without the need for soundbites or the embarrassment of own-goal leaks. In other words, they’ve acted as governments should. The values of a marathoner and of a hockey nation, rather than those of a lone wolf mulligan golfer.

What Trump has acknowledged, to the tune of billions of dollars, is that international trade works and is good for everyone. Making America Great Again happens when you let the most efficient and reliable suppliers do their thing, while you do those things at which you excel. It also acknowledges that smaller states who focus on the things they do best are on a trading par with, or have an advantage over, the biggest players. In other words, eight billion people get more relief by scratching one anothers’ backs rather than their own.

Oddly enough, this view of international trade is really a universalized application of the Alignment Doctrine: when you live in the centre of your Giftings and focus tightly on the Needs of your best Clients, everybody wins.

Who’d a thunk?

WHO SENT ME THE WONDERFUL GIFT? Sometime around January 29 of this year, somebody sent me an excellent commentary on my Chapter 5 that I had sent them. I have the docs, I’ve lost the original emails, so I don’t know who to thank. Please let me know, and in any event know that the comments were useful and appreciated!