Trade, diplomacy are ways to make friends, not enemies

While previous US administrations used trade deals as a way of promoting US influence around the world, trade was not the be-all and end-all of their foreign policy. The same cannot be said of the current administration as President Donald Trump has made trade the defining characteristic of his foreign policy.

Whether it be through sanctions or tariffs, trade is being used as leverage for the populist "America first" strategy that propelled him through the White House door.

The use of aggressive trade policies to achieve foreign policy objectives may make the US president feel more at ease, as it is deal-making in a manner he is used to, but it risks reducing complex issues to a "you lose, I win" proposition or else complicating them further. One only has to look at his conflating the trade dispute with China with his stalled engagement with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to see how this has compounded both issues exponentially and by a large order of magnitude.