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On his fourth day in office, President Trump signed an executive order formally withdrawing the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. Crafted by the Obama administration, the trade deal failed to be ratified by Congress during Obama's two terms. (Daron Taylor/The Washington Post)

Donald Trump meant what he said about trade.

When he isn't getting attention for telling demonstrable falsehoods about the size of his inauguration crowd, Trump has been busy filling his administration with people who want to get tough on China, threatening to put tariffs on companies that outsource jobs, and, as he did on Monday, pulling the United States out of big trade deals. Indeed, he officially killed the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and is expected to announce that he wants to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement as well.

How much does this matter? Well, when it comes to the TPP, maybe not as much as you might think for an agreement that would have created a single market for most of the Pacific rim other than China. At least not in economic terms. The U.S. International Trade Commission, after all, estimates that the TPP would have raised our inflation-adjusted incomes only by 0.23 percent in total between now and 2032. That's not nothing, but it's pretty darn close. That's because the TPP wasn't really about reducing tariffs. Those are already quite low for the countries involved. It was more about making other countries follow our rules for patents and intellectual property, raising prices for Asian consumers and profits for American companies. That'd be better for our shareholders, but not necessarily for our workers. In all likelihood, it wouldn't change our jobs picture very much for good or ill.

No, the real reason to support the TPP wasn't economics so much as geopolitics. It was about keeping an economic foot firmly planted in China's backyard, and writing the trade rules so they couldn't. If this sounds like a less quantifiable benefit, well, that's because it is. At the same time, though, this kind of logic was a part of almost all our trade deals the past 70 years. Initially, these were about setting a system to promote prosperity abroad so fragile postwar democracies could resist Communist pressure. But even after the Berlin Wall came down, they were still a way to not only open up markets, but also reward countries for reforming their economies like we wanted. As Paul Krugman argued at the time, that was why NAFTA made more sense than any economic model would have told you. If we rejected Mexico's liberalizing government, it might have collapsed and an anti-American one could have taken its place.

Now, that's not to say that all trade deals are economically irrelevant. They aren't. NAFTA really did move a decentchunk of our manufacturing base south of the border, whether a giant sucking sound accompanied it. And granting China Permanent Normal Trade Relations status in 2000 really did seem to give companies the confidence they needed to shift production thereon a far larger scale than they had before, sincethey no longer had toworry about the risk of tariffs rising.

What we are saying, though, is that the era of big trade deals is over. And that was true even before Trump announced his candidacy before a raucous crowd of paid actors. The simple story is that we've already pushed tariffs about as low as they can go, and all that's left is to negotiate over non-tariff trade barriers. But the problem is that those sorts of things say, rules about intellectual property or government procurement are what we used to think of as the sole province of domestic policy. Which is why they can feel like they're infringing on a country's sovereignty. The result is that these new trade deals are more difficult politically and less useful economically than previous ones.

But what's changing with Trump is that we aren'teven trying to lead on trade anymore. He doesn't see thesedeals as a way to win friends and influence people, but rather to win manufacturing jobs and influence his approval rating. That might sound like common sense to some people, but it does leave an opening for other countries yes, China to negotiate where we're not. The risk, then, is that globalization might not proceed on our terms or with our values. But there's a greater danger. It's not that Trump won't make further progress on trade, but rather will backtrack on where we are. New trade deals might not help much, but unraveling old ones would hurt. At that point, we wouldn't have the luxury of worrying about whose globalization we had. The answer wouldbe nobody's. And the whole world would be a little bit poorer.

Or as Trump calls it, America would be great again.

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Donald Trump just forfeited in his first fight with China - Washington Post

Imagine youre a member of Donald Trumps administration, or a Republican member of Congress. Whats the most important question youre asking yourself right now?

Theres a good chance its this: How can I manipulate the president into doing what I want him to do?

This may be the most important question in Washington as a whole, because this is a president like no other.

Lets take a few news items weve seen just in the past day or so:

The picture were getting is of a president spending long stretches of time watching television, consumed with anger at slights real or imagined, as aides and other political actors circle around him trying to find a way to use his capricious whims to their advantage or at least minimize the damage he can do. The agenda is liable to be seized by whatever happens to be bothering Trump that day, whether its the size of the crowd at his inaugural or the fact that more people voted for Hillary Clinton than for him, both profound threats to his ego that he cant seem to let go of.

President Trump questioned media reports and photographs that showed the size of Inauguration Day crowds, speaking to CIA employees at CIA headquarters on Jan. 21 in Langley, Va. (The Washington Post)

Even apart from the substance of these reports is the fact that the Trump administration is already leaking like a sieve, as people within the inner circle voice their frustration, jockey for position, and use the press to discredit their rivals. Yes, in every administration there are competitions for the presidents ear and internal squabbles as people try to maximize their influence. Whats remarkable is how in this one theyre becoming public so quickly and that even his loyalists are treating the president like a child whose disturbing behavior has to be managed.

Trumps personal quirks and weaknesses could turn ordinary internal conflicts into outright chaos. Because he not only knows so little about policy but seems to have few fixed beliefs, his public statements are completely unpredictable. So he might say that Republicans will give insurance for everybody, leaving both administration spokespeople and members of Congress scrambling to explain a promise they have no intention of keeping.

It isnt just that Trump is uninterested in policy. To take one comparison, Ronald Reagan didnt much care about the details either. But Reagan had a clear ideological vision that guided his administration, and it wasnt hard to predict what hed think about any particular proposal or action. In the Trump administration, on the other hand, you have traditional Republicans who will sometimes be at odds with the nationalist/populist cohort led by Steve Bannon, and which side the president favors at a given moment could be determined by something the nincompoops on Fox & Friends said that morning.

That means that most of the time, no one can claim or believe that theyre carrying out Trumps true wishes or agenda, since those are subject to complete revision at a moments notice. Thats not exactly a recipe for a smoothly efficient administration. Instead, it may wind up with dozens or even hundreds of power centers spread throughout the government, each pursuing its own agenda, sometimes in concert, sometimes in conflict.

At the moment theres an almost comical element to all that, and Democrats might take some solace in it. After all, its better to face an adversary at war with itself than one that knows exactly what it wants to do and how to do it. But what happens when the Trump administration confronts a crisis, as it surely will before long? To just take one example, Trump has repeatedly said that NATO is obsolete and suggested that if one of its members were threatened he might not come to its defense. Yet Secretary of Defense James Mattis just told the British defense minister that America has an unshakable commitment to NATO. So which is it? We may not find out until Vladimir Putin invades Estonia.

So the shape of the Trump administration could be determined less by a vision the president himself is guided by than by how skillful each faction of inside players is at manipulating him. Its not exactly reassuring.

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The coming struggle for control of Donald Trump's mind - Washington Post (blog)

President Donald Trump is obsessed with the media consuming it, reacting to itand being depicted positively by it. That obsessions is born not only out of egotism but, as recent reports reveal, by a seemingly-uncontrollable fixation on them. The word addiction is not being used here literally, but when reading about his media consumption habits, it can be difficult to think of a fitting substitute.

Print copies of three newspapers, wroteMike Allen and Jim VandeHei of Axios in an article describing the presidents media habits on Tuesday. When Billy Bush was on, Access Hollywood every night. TiVo of the morning and evening news shows so he can watch the tops of all of them. Always 60 Minutes. Often Meet the Press. Lots of New York talk radio.

Allen and VandeHei also reportedthat Trump doesnt read books and avoids reports and briefings he considers too lengthy. That didntmean that Trump is hip to advancing technologies, however he doesnt use computers and rarely uses his phone for anything but calls. Even his infamous tweets are oftendictated and then submitted by others. He doesnt follow online news outlets, instead preferring traditional outlets including newspapers like The New York Times and The New York Post (which one friend referred to as the paper of record for him) and journalistic programs like 60 Minutes.

He is particularly obsessed with TV.

On Saturday, when Trump saw TV networks comparing his own tepid inaugural turnout with Obamas much more impressive showing in 2009, he became so infuriated that his advisers were unable to convince him to ignore the negative coverage or simply respond to it on Twitter, according to The Washington Post on Monday. Instead he demanded that Press Secretary Sean Spicer denounce the negative coverage, and despite widespread criticism that Spicer had crossed the line by blatantly promoting lies about Trumps inauguration (or what Kellyanne Conway later referred to as alternative facts), Trumps main complaint was that Spicer had seemed too reliant on a printed statement and had not been sufficiently compelling. He was more pleased with Spicers performance on Monday.

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Donald Trump's watching a lot of television, and it's worrying his aides: reports - Salon

Donald Trumps inaugural address produced yet another torrent of commentary about his populist, isolationist ideology and what it means for the future of the republic and the world. Unfortunately, he is all about neither of those things.

Its true that he deployed the voice of a demagogue to rant about elites and powerful politicians and repeatedly evoked the people. But considering that his hires includesix Goldman Sachs alums, three billionaires and several more vastly wealthy multimillionaires for his Cabinet, his alleged populism seems a bit strained. After all, to the extent thehellscape he described in that speech exists, it was created by the very people he is now empowering.

Calling Trump anisolationist rests mostly on his use of the archaic term America First, which was associated with attempts to keep America out of World War II (and also came with strong undercurrents of anti-Semitism.) But there is no evidence that Trump had a clue about that association when he started using the phrase.

Recall that whenjournalist Michael Wolff interviewed himin June, just before the big vote in the U.K., Trump clearly hadnt heard of Brexit.Granted, he subsequently become fast friends with Brexit architect and right-wing provocateur Nigel Farage. But his idea of isolationism in this case is a simplistic belief that any nation run by smart guys can make better deals without having other countries represented at the table.

As far as security is concerned,Trumps threats to withdraw from NATOand other alliances arentreally about wanting to pull America to remainwithin its borders. He never says that. In fact, he wants a huge military and wants to show it offso everyone in the world will be in awe of American power. He just wants NATO and other alliances to pay protection money to the U.S. for whatever price he sets.

Trump has repeatedly made the fatuous claim that hes going to make the military so massive that no one will ever want to mess with us but never has actually suggested that he would have any reluctance to use it. Indeed,hes made it clear that he intends to do just that, telling his rowdy crowds during the campaign:

ISIS is making a tremendous amount of money because of the oil that they took away, they have some in Syria, they have some in Iraq, I would bomb the shit out of them.

I would just bomb those suckers, and thats right, Id blow up the pipes. Id blow up the refineries. Id blow up ever single inch. There would be nothing left.

And you know what, youll get Exxon to come in there, and in two months you ever see these guys? How good they are, the great oil companies.Theyll rebuild it brand new. . . . And Ill take the oil.

This has been his promise from Day One. Yesterday, press secretary Sean Spicer, reacting to Russian reports that the U.S. military was already engaged with Russiasforces in bombing Syria, offered up this startling answer:

Spicer: I know its still developing and I would refer you back to the Department of Defense. I know that theyre theyre currently monitoring this and I would refer you back to them on that. And I think . . .

Question: Generally open?

Spicer: I think, the president has been very clearly. [sic] Hes gonna work with any country that shares our interest in defeating ISIS. Not just on the national security front, but on the economic front. If we can work with someone to create greater market access and spur economic growth and allow U.S. small businesses and companies to. . .

Question:[inaudible] to doing joint military actions with Russia in Syria?

Spicer: I I think if theres a way that we can combat ISIS with any country, whether its Russia or anyone else, and we have a shared national interest in that, sure well take it.

The Pentagon adamantly deniedthat the U.S. military was currently helping Russia in Syria, where the Russian military has beenaccused by the U.N. of committing war crimesby using bunker-busting and incendiary bombs on civilian populations.Spicer didnt mention any of that, but Trump is undoubtedly unconcerned since his strategy is the same: Bomb the shit out of them.

As for taking the oil, which is a suggestion Trump has repeated for months (including as recently as Saturday when he told the CIA officials they might get another chance at it) even conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer was taken aback, correctly noting that seizing the oil is a war crime.

If you have listened to Trump talk about China over the past 18 months, it is clear that he is not simply talking about a potential trade war but is prepared to confront the worlds largest nation militarily. In his confirmation hearings, secretary of state-designate Rex Tillerson made it clear that he agreed with Trump that the U.S. would not allow China to build military bases on islands in the South China Sea, and Spicer made that official yesterday:

I think the U.S. is going to make sure that we protect our interests there. If those islands are in fact in international waters and not part of China proper, then yes, were going to make sure that we defend international territories from being taken over by one country.

Does that sound like any definition of isolationism youve ever heard?

When Donald Trump says America First, he really means Were No. 1. He talks incessantly about winning, so much well be begging him to stop. He openly declares that he believes in the old sayingto the victors belong the spoils, either suggesting that he has no clue about the Wests colonial past and how that sounds to people around the world or simply doesnt care. Hes not talking about isolationism but the exact opposite American global dominance without all those messy institutions and international agreements standing in the way of taking what we want.

No, Trump is not an isolationist. Hes not a realist. Neither is he a liberal interventionist or a neoconservative idealist. Hes an old-fashioned imperialist. He wants to Make America great again by making it the worlds dominant superpower, capable ofbullying other countries into submission and behaving however we like. He doesnt seem to understand that the world wont put up with that.

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Donald Trump, imperialist: Forget isolationism Trump longs to build up our military and then use it - Salon

In the first days of his presidency, Trump has shown he will continue to wreak havoc on established facts, even as he ticks items off his political to-do list.

The latest false claim, which legislators reported to CNN and other news outlets, has no basis in fact and apparently originated on websites that peddle conspiracy theories.

However, like many of the distortions in which Trump has trafficked, the voter fraud narrative suggests he deserves more credit and acclaim than he has received.

Throughout his life Trump has insisted he is richer than people acknowledge. Now winning the presidency isn't sufficient. He wants the final score to be adjusted in his favor.

Trump's complaints and distortions suggest that even as he carries out his duties as President, he will reflexively promote his alternative view of reality.

The day after his inaugural address, Trump -- in a speech to the CIA -- denied ample photographic evidence, insisting that his swearing in was in fact attended by a crowd that "looked like a million, a million and a half people."

Coming on his first full day in office, Trump's 15-minute talk was delivered as he stood before the Wall of Stars that memorializes CIA agents killed in action.

It's hard to imagine that anyone could occupy this spot and speak with so little regard for accuracy and truth. However, this is Donald Trump, and he didn't get where he is by exercising care, precision and restraint.

Donald Trump became a public figure in New York by promoting himself as a high-achieving real estate mogul -- before he'd built a single project.

Although political craft often includes cherry-picking facts and battles with straw men, Trump far exceeds the norm and has confounded analysts and pundits who try to assess him.

During his campaign, which included many specious claims about his opponents, much was written and said about how he might "pivot" to show he could be presidential. This change never happened and, now that he holds the office, he seems equally disinclined.

Understanding why requires acknowledging both the man's record and the dynamics that are engaged when people lie and get away with it.

Knowing that character is destiny, parents teach their children to tell the truth, but invariably preschoolers discover that honesty isn't always required.

Adolescent adjustment requires that we come to grips with the fact that lying is part of human nature. People tend to rank deceptions according to the harm they cause, or, in some cases, the greater good they may achieve.

Economists and other social scientists have documented the prevalence of lying and shown that people feel more comfortable lying if they think their deceit will help someone worthy.

Of course most of us want to be considered trustworthy and we know that all relationships, from the personal to the political, depend on reliable truth telling. The exceptions are those who discover they can get away with distortions, and even profit from them. Those capable of the most sophisticated deceptions are bold, brazen, and may even enlist others in support of the process.

History is replete with examples of lies, told and agreed to, with scandalous results. The crime and coverup that doomed Richard Nixon's presidency was a florid display of the danger in deception.

The collapse of so-called dot-com companies -- including Enron and Worldcom -- came when systemic lies unraveled.

After the election, prominent Trump supporter Scottie Nell Hughes told public radio talk show host Diane Rhem "there's no such thing, unfortunately, anymore as facts."

Amid the controversy over Trump's statement at the CIA, his press secretary Sean Spicer used his first appearance before the White House press corps to support the boss's claims with a lecture riddled with inaccuracies about the inauguration. (He even offered inflated numbers for the local transit system's ridership.)

Conway's reference to alternative facts, and Spicer's strange Saturday rant, provoked pointed criticism of the sort that would trouble someone unaccustomed to Trump-style combat against the facts.

When he next met with reporters, whom he must deal with on a regular basis, Spicer tried to make them understand him -- in a way that Trump never would.

He said: "The default narrative [of the press] is always negative, and that's demoralizing. It's a little demoralizing because when you are sitting there and you are looking out and you are in awe of just how awesome that view is and how many people are there and you turn on the television and you see shots comparing this and that."

It is easy to empathize with Spicer's experience, but if he is demoralized it's mainly because he is part of a team led by a man who has never been satisfied with his real achievements.

When you demand that others reject what they know to be true in favor of a gilded vision that favors your side, you are bound to receive a demoralizing response.

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Lying has worked for Donald Trump -- so why stop now? - CNN