WASHINGTON: His staff hollowing out and his agenda languishing, President Donald Trump is increasingly flying solo.
Always improvisational, the president exercised his penchant for going it alone in a big way this week: first, by ordering sweeping tariffs opposed by foreign allies and by many in his own party, then hours later delivering the stunning news that he’ll meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
An on-the-spot decision with global ramifications, Trump’s agreement to sit down with Kim came after a meeting with a South Korean delegation and took some of his top aides by surprise.
The president has long considered himself his own best consultant, saying during the presidential campaign: “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things.”
Trump has told confidants recently that he wants to be less reliant on his staff, believing they often give bad advice, and that he plans to follow his own instincts, which he credits with his stunning election, according to two people who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about private conversations.
Trump’s latest unilateral moves come at a moment of vulnerability for the president. Top staffers are heading for the exits, the Russia investigation continues to loom and Trump is facing growing questions about a lawsuit filed by a porn actress who claims her affair with the president was hushed up.
The White House pushed back against the notion that Trump’s decision to meet with Kim was made in haste, with spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders saying, “This has been part of an ongoing campaign that’s been going for over a year.”
White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said Trump takes input from a “diverse set of viewpoints,” but added that “he knows it was his name on the ballot and he controls timing, content and tone.”
Advisers argue that tales of Trump’s freelancing are exaggerated and that in many cases — as with tariffs — he is following through on long-stated promises. Still, the president’s decisions, as well as his proclivity for off-the-cuff announcements, frequently leave aides and allies guessing.
News that the president would accept a meeting never taken by a sitting US president came from an unlikely source Thursday evening: a last-minute press statement by a South Korean official standing in the dark on the White House driveway.
With reality-show flair, Trump built suspense for the announcement by making an impromptu visit to the White House briefing room.
The South Korean official, Chung Eui-yong, spoke with Trump on Thursday after meeting with national security adviser H.R. McMaster and others. Trump asked Chung about a recent meeting with the North Korean dictator. The South Korean official relayed that Kim wanted to meet with Trump — and the president immediately accepted, according to a White House official, who was not authorized to discuss the meeting and was speaking on condition of anonymity.
Trump then asked Chung to announce it to the White House press, but Chung wanted first to check in with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, the official said. Moon granted permission, prompting Trump to make his first known foray into the White House briefing room to inform reporters that the South Koreans would soon be making a major announcement.
“Great progress being made,” Trump later tweeted, adding: “Meeting being planned!“
This was not the only recent moment where Trump opted to trust his gut and go it alone.
Determined to keep what he viewed as a crucial campaign promise, Trump forged forward with a plan to order new tariffs this week. In the process, he saw his top economic adviser, Gary Cohn, head for the exit and faced his most public condemnation to date from Republican lawmakers.
Trump let advisers Cohn and Peter Navarro, who stood on opposite sides of the issue, debate tariffs for weeks, at times contentiously. At another point, during a meeting with steel and aluminum executives, Trump urged Cohn to engage in a debate with US Steel CEO Dave Burritt, according to two people familiar with the exchange and not authorized to discuss it publicly.
Cohn announced his departure as it became clear Trump would move ahead with the tariffs.
In recent days, Trump told advisers that his experience in business gave him an edge in deciding what to do on tariffs. He told aides that he been proclaiming for 30 years that the United States needed a more protectionist approach, according to two White House officials not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations.
The president also boasted to outside advisers that he knew the tariffs issue better than his advisers and suggested that the move could help him lock up Rust Belt states like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan again, according to a person familiar with the president’s thinking but not authorized to publicly discuss private conversations.
The president has previously shown his preference for working alone — with mixed results.
Trump surprised the Pentagon last year with a series of tweets announcing he would reverse Obama-era policies allowing transgender individuals to serve in the armed forces. He made a surprise spending deal with Democrats “Chuck and Nancy” that boxed out his own party. And he sent out a series of puzzling tweets about a key spying law that threw Congress into disarray ahead of votes to reauthorize the program.
Advisers and supporters were caught off guard recently when Trump appeared to embrace gun control measures at a freewheeling roundtable with lawmakers in the wake of a Florida school shooting. He later met with the National Rifle Association and appeared to soften his stance, but his comment “take the guns first, go through due process second” drew strong criticism.
Still, Trump continues to hold that — as he said at the 2016 Republican Convention — he “alone” can fix things. He made that clear when he ran into an ABC reporter in the moments before the North Korea announcement.
Trump wouldn’t say exactly what was coming, but he stressed: “Hopefully, you will give me credit.”
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Lemire reported from New York. Associated Press writers Jill Colvin and Ken Thomas contributed from Washington.
When the going gets tough, Trump goes it alone
When the going gets tough, Trump goes it alone
As India claims fourth-largest economy spot, what it means on the ground
- Indian government review says economy grew to $4.19 billion, overtaking Japan
- Claim still needs IMF review as only organized sector counted, economist says
NEW DELHI: When Ramesh Chandra Biswal left his job as a space scientist in the US, he returned to eastern India and ran an agriculture startup on a promise of his country’s rapid economic growth.
Nine years on, as India positions itself as the world’s fourth largest economy, he is still waiting for the promise to come true.
India’s economy was the sixth largest in the world, valued at about $2.6 trillion in 2017, when Biswal launched his Villamart project in his home village in Odisha.
According to calculations in the Indian government’s end-of-year economic review, it has now grown to $4.19 trillion, overtaking Japan’s economy in terms of nominal Gross Domestic Product.
The review also projects that India will overtake Germany to become the world’s third-largest economy within the next three years, trailing only the US and China in economic weight.
But on the ground, Biswal was not sure what the projections meant because they had no impact on his life or business.
“The hype around India becoming the fourth largest economy is not grounded. People cannot relate to that,” he said.
“The number of people here in India is much more than Japan ... We have to improve the per capita income instead of telling the story of being the fourth largest economy.”
Over the years that he has been running his company, Biswal has not noticed much change, but hoped that the news of the country’s growth would at least create a positive hype and motivate everyone.
“People are trying. As an entrepreneur, we are also trying, struggling every day, trying to do something new,” he said.
“I’m getting some respect in society. That way, it is giving me the driving force.”
But not everyone was immediately optimistic. For Sarvesh Sau, a fruit seller in Delhi, it has been increasingly difficult to keep his family afloat.
“Rich people are getting rich, those who have resources ... but a low-income group person like me finds it difficult to manage a decent living despite putting in more than 12 hours of work every day.
“We are a big nation, and we will look big compared to others. Are we able to match Japan?”
The world’s most populous nation, India has about 1.46 billion people and a GDP per capita estimated by the World Bank to be about $2,700. It is about 12 times lower than Japan’s.
Yogendra Kumar, a plumber in Noida, said his income has been rising, but it is consistently outpaced by the cost of living, leaving him feeling poorer over time.
“I have heard that India has become the fourth largest economy, but I don’t know how to react to that. It does not make any difference to our lives. It sounds good that India is growing, but the matter of fact is that for people like me the struggle for survival is more acute now than before,” he said.
“Today I earn more but the inflation takes away all the money, and it makes it difficult to have a comfortable life,” he told Arab News. “Mustard oil was 50 rupees 10 years ago. It is now 200 rupees. A cooking gas cylinder used to cost 500 rupees — now it costs more than double. Everything is so expensive.”
While India’s claim of being the fourth-largest economy is still awaiting review by the International Monetary Fund, Prof. Arun Kumar, a development economist, does not expect it to be confirmed.
“Our GDP data, as the IMF has said, is suspect because it doesn’t include the informal sector ... According to my estimate, we are still the seventh largest economy, just ahead of Italy,” he told Arab News, also estimating India’s actual growth to be much lower than the government’s projection.
“Even though official data shows a 7 percent to 8 percent rate of growth, people realize that it’s not growing so well,” Prof. Kumar said.
“The rate of growth is only of the organized sector, not of the unorganized sector ... The unorganized sector is declining and that is where 94 percent of the employment is.”
