Donald Trump’s policy volte face

His critics called him a political novice, blasted his unorthodox presidential campaign and wrote him off for US presidency. Still Trump became 45th president of United States defying all odds. But one thing his detractors failed to understand was Trump’s ability to
make about-face on promises and policies related to both domestic and international issues if the situation demands.
In less than 100 days in office, Trump has flipped on many of his campaign promises that pulled millions of voters to his camp. One by one he is reversing himself on many key issues contrary to his claim of keeping his promises.
In a raft of interviews this week, the Republican leader took new positions on NATO, China, Syria and most importantly on Russia. On the presidential campaign trail, Trump had dismissed NATO as “obsolete,” and called it incompetent in combating the growing threat from terrorism. He also blasted the member countries for not paying their fair share towards defense. But during the meeting with NATO Secretary General in White House, Trump retracted from his previous position and said, “I said it was obsolete. It’s no longer obsolete.” But he stressed that NATO members must abide a 2014 agreement to boost defense spending to 2 percent of GDP within a decade. Currently, just the US and a handful of other countries are meeting the 2 percent target.
As a presidential candidate and even after taking office, Trump called China a ‘grand champion’ of currency manipulator. He had promised American voters that as a president he would direct his treasury secretary to label China a currency manipulator. “You know when you talk about currency manipulation, when you talk about devaluations, they are world champions,” he said of China. “And our country hasn’t had a clue, they haven’t had a clue.”
Now Trump made China volte face after meeting with Xi. In an interview to Financial Times, Trump said he’d changed his mind because Beijing hasn’t been manipulating its currency for months. He made this policy change to serve as an incentive for China to help in containing the threat posed by North Korea.
Trump had never supported any military actions to oust Syrian President Bashar Al Assad. But after the recent chemical weapons attack he said, “I will tell you that attack on children had a big impact on me – big impact.” He responded swiftly and authorized missile attacks on Syrian airbases.
Among all his U-turns, Russia is the most stunning one. Trump has declared that US relations with Russia “may be at an all-time low.” The US president’s remarks came in the wake of meeting between US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump said flatly, “Right now we’re not getting along with Russia at all.”
This serves a heavy blow to any prospect of better relations with Russia in near future. Throughout the US election campaign, Trump heaped blandishments on Putin. Syrian conflict and US investigations into Russian hacking scandal have poured cold water on a potentially historic
rapprochement with Russia.