August 8, 2025
SEOUL – After long and difficult negotiations over tariffs between the US and its major trading partners, most have reached last-minute agreements with the US. The agreements, including the one with South Korea, follow a similar pattern of 15 percent tariffs on goods sent to the US, combined with promises to purchase more US goods and increase investment in the US. Among major US trading partners, deadlines have been extended for China and Mexico, but tariffs on Canadian goods not covered by the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement jumped to 35 percent.
The continued negotiations with China suggest Trump may have softened his long-held hard-line stance. In July, he lifted the restriction on selling Nvidia’s advanced H20 AI chips to China. After imposing 145 percent tariffs on Chinese goods in April, he reduced them to 30 percent in response to sharp declines in US stocks. Later, he set a deadline of Aug. 12, but an extension is likely.
In the meantime, Trump’s views of India have begun to sour. In recent days, he has threatened India, the 10th largest trading partner with the US, with heavy tariffs if it continues to buy Russian oil. India refused, hoping that Trump would pull back from damaging the closer relations between the two countries that began during his first term, but Trump’s changing views on India come from an increasingly critical stance toward Russia stemming from its refusal to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine.
What is going on? The core of Trump, as I have noted before, is narcissism. Like all narcissists, he needs attention and adoration. Attention means being at the center of things, the all-powerful prime mover. Adoration means winning moments and cheering crowds. Everything Trump has done in his long public life confirms this hypothesis. Call it the Trump Operating System, or TOS for short.
For Trump, foreign policy is just one of many fields to stir things up to gain attention and adoration. Economic policy, including tariffs, is another, as is immigration. What appear to be long-held beliefs — for example, tariffs — which run against long-established views and norms, are really tools for disruption that put Trump at the center of attention.
Foreign policy offers Trump an important vehicle for attention and adoration: A Nobel Peace Prize. Since the prize was created in 1901, four US presidents — Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama — have won. Of these, only Jimmy Carter won the prize after leaving office. Trump desperately wants to join this list, particularly because Obama, his first-term predecessor, is on it.
Winning the Nobel Peace Prize is the prime mover of Trump’s foreign policy, particularly now that he is in his last term. What opportunities does Trump have?
Gaza and Ukraine top the list, which explains why Trump has focused on them since returning to the White House. Initially, he tried to get ceasefire negotiations started between the combatants, but as the conflicts have raged on, he has become frustrated and has shifted his focus to Ukraine. He now hopes that increasing support for Ukraine and threatening more sanctions against Russia will pressure the Russians to come to the negotiating table.
In this fluid situation, Trump’s views of China may be moderating. Since Trump’s first term, China has moved closer to Russia as tensions with the US have increased. Trump’s more conciliatory stance on China suggests that he may be trying to woo the country away from Russia. Trump’s recent tariff threats against India are an attempt to pull it away from Russia as well. A weakened Russia would then have no choice but to negotiate a peace agreement with Ukraine, which would, in Trump’s mind, raise his prospects of winning a Nobel Peace Prize.
In the hands of a different president, the strategy might offer hope of pressuring Russia while reducing tensions between the world’s two largest economies. Barring a sudden change in leadership, such breakthroughs require a slow process of trust-building and finding common ground. The actors need to view the process of rapprochement as a long-term investment in a worthy goal.
Donald Trump doesn’t have the discipline or patience for any sort of process because he is interested in the right-now attention of the show. Expect him to cycle through attempts to be the peacemaker in the desperate hope of winning a Nobel Peace Prize. And expect those on the other side of the table to know exactly what is going on.
Robert J. Fouser, a former associate professor of Korean language education at Seoul National University, writes on Korea from Providence, Rhode Island. He can be reached at robertjfouser@gmail.com. The views expressed here are the writer’s own. — Ed.