What are the qualities of world leadership? Simply sitting on the UN Security Council or being one of the G7 countries can’t really amount to much (I don’t think folks look to France as a world leader, and they are on both!). World leadership also can’t be about largest army and nuclear arsenal – Russia has the most nukes, and about the same size army as the US – no one believes that they are world leaders. No, world leadership comes from not merely economic and military impact but also key leadership qualities. These qualities are similar to those embodied in civic and corporate leaders – principled, consistent, reliable, trustworthy. Without these qualities, relationships are fragile, transactional, and lack sustainability.

Yet these qualities are almost totally lacking from President Trump and his administration. Whether it is international trade, foreign policy, defensive or offensive military activity, or economic messaging – the lack of principled and reliable positioning has weakened US leadership. It’s never a good sign when financial markets and the media assign a label like TACO (Trump always chickens out) to your decision pattern early in your administration. But when it bleeds into other realms, it begins to look like the ship has no rudder.

Trade has been the highest profile element of the administration’s wavering. ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs get put on hold after the stock market plummets in response. Special tariffs get delayed months, even years, creating unreliability of supply chains. Foreign government leaders begin to actively source products and trade relationships with other countries in order to stabilize the availability and price of their goods – breaking relationships with US suppliers that never were at risk before. And angry foreign sources of demand actively punish US sellers for the unilateral decisions made against their products (try to find US alcohol on Canadian market shelves in the largest provinces; China still hasn’t purchased the amount of soybeans from US farmers that they did prior to Liberation Day). The President wants to break the USMCA trade agreement that his first administration negotiated and he proclaimed as the best agreement ever. All of this instability has not led to actual multiparty trade agreements – and why should they? Who wants to enter into an agreement with someone who might change their mind in a month or a year? What’s the point?

Saber-rattling on the international stage hasn’t built stronger relationships either. It began with threats against Denmark to sell the US Greenland (like its a century ago when large land masses were traded between countries) – NATO countries did not appreciate the threat. The US is being marginalized in Europe through increased defense spending from the European industrial complex instead of US arms makers. And NATO nations were not consulted when the US chose to start a war with Iran and thus many closed their air space to US Air Force assets (including Italy), so as not to be drawn into the fray. Middle Eastern allies (Saudis, UAE, Kuwait) weren’t consulted either, and their economic and military sites were hit by Iran in the process. Even when the US moves forward with a treaty (the nuclear treaty with the Saudis) with much pomp and circumstance, only a day passed before the President revised the terms of the treaty to make it contingent on the Saudis joining the Abraham Accords (something they are unlikely to do in my lifetime). No new friends have been made and many alliances have been shaken. Even the Saudis, Pakistan and Turkey have formed a new security alliance – we just aren’t reliable anymore.

And really, what can we be relied upon to do? Supply defensive weapons to allies? Our weapons stockpiles are severely depleted due to their wasteful use against Iran. Keep global trade moving? The US has managed to clumsily produce instability of trade through the Red Sea, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Suez Canal (Brent Crude prices are already up after Iran reiterated their conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz). Donald Trump has reduced the bully pulpit to a megaphone for bullying without the ability to produce a result for the American people. Call it TACO, call it backpedaling, call it backsliding – call it reliably unreliable. Weaker by any standard.

And the national disgrace continues…