Two Presidents, Two Policies, One Superpower: America in Transition
The New York Times
Even as President Biden brokers a cease-fire in Lebanon, President-elect Donald J. Trump is running his own foreign policy without waiting to be sworn in.
The old adage about the interregnum between an election and an inauguration is that there is only one president at a time. Try telling that to the rest of the world now.
While one president, the one actually still living in the White House, attends international summit meetings and brokers a Middle East cease-fire to cap his tenure, another president, the one who has not actually taken office yet, is busy conducting a foreign policy of his own from his Spanish-tiled Florida estate.
Without waiting to be sworn in, President-elect Donald J. Trump effectively declared a trade war this week by announcing that he would impose tariffs on America’s friends, Canada and Mexico, as well as its rival China on Day 1 of his administration. The next day, President Biden strode into the Rose Garden to announce an agreement to end more than a year of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.
This is America in the time of transition, making peace and declaring war, all in the same 24-hour news cycle — two presidents leading the country in two different directions, one officially, the other unofficially; one representing the past and present, the other the future. Whipsawed and maybe just a little confused, foreign leaders are left to calculate whether it makes sense to try to get something done with the outgoing leader or brace for the reality of his successor.
“Transitions always result in a momentum shift to the new team, but this time around feels more pronounced than any transition in recent memory,” said Suzanne Maloney, the director of the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution in Washington and a former State Department adviser.
“Leaders in capitals around the world are trying to take advantage of the moment to try to curry favor with Trump himself at a time when it may still be possible to shape his agenda,” she added. And Mr. Trump’s “inner circle is dismissive of the traditional Washington protocols that might suggest some discretion during the transition.”
