He’s watching a ton of Fox News and repeats talking points from them. He often reacts to having seen things. Recently, he reacted to the Gaza situation, criticizing Netanyahu, after having seen video of famished children.
Remember his drones rant about them destroying the trees? That looks like another video he’s seen where drones did hit trees.
TV is his reality and he is discovering things through it. He’s both very easy to manipulate and a wild card, as he has a way to react according to what he’s seen/whom he’s talked to last and can do 180s that way (think Ukraine. Russia is still at 0% tariffs, BTW, though he’s recently threatened to use them if a peace can’t be brokered).
Other leaders, especially Keir Starmer (UK) and Claudia Sheinbaum (Mexico) have learnt to deal with him. We’re currently in the same basket as Canada, who gets tariffed over anything (most recently fentanyl allegedly crossing the border) and can’t figure out what to offer. They’ve adopted a very fighty stance due to the threat of annexation. We’re not there yet ourselves.
Just… don’t go to him using rational reasoning and fairness talking points. Say he’s the awesomest, give him something he can call a win domestically and a mansion in Gstaad and you’re done. One of the problems Switzerland is facing is that he wants to lower the price of drugs in the US, so Pharma is on his target list, and he wants to weaken the dollar, so the SNB policies are offensive to him. Not sure we can wiggle our way out of that without shifting our own stance and strategic outputs.
The alternative is to show strength, which makes him back off, and threat him like China does. I don’t think we have the strenght for it. It may have been an option when we could have stood with the EU to negociate and exert pressure together but that time is gone. We are now at a trading disadvantage with the EU unless we learn to deal with them and funnel our trade to the US through EU ports. They hold a lot of leverage over us, currently.
Edit: alternatively, get the US bond market to get ‘the yippies’ and he’ll back off too. Pretty sure we’ve got cards we can play in that area, though we should not do so alone. He’s playing divide and conquer, we have more strength if we unite with others.