Meanwhile, life went on in the White House, as America found itself grappling with typical international issues that needed close attention.

At the end of November 2018, Trump, plus leaders of Mexico and Canada, signed the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), replacing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) first negotiated during in the Bush, Sr. presidency and put into force under the Clinton presidency.  As with NAFTA, the USMCA was designed to create "fair" trade operations among these three North American countries.

Over time, commercial dynamics had changed as the economies of the three countries developed.  A big trade imbalance in favor of Mexico was developing for America; American-Canadian trade was more closely balanced, though even then slightly in favor of Canada.  A big issue was Mexico's VAT (Value Added Tax), a European invention that encourages exports by taxing items only when finally sold, unless the items are exported, and thus they become untaxed.  Thus American products headed to Mexico get taxed in America at various stages of production, and then additionally by Mexico's VAT of 16 percent rate, whereas Mexican products leaving the country do not get taxed, a form of subsidy for Mexican exports.  In addition to this subsidy, cheap Mexican labor had drawn many American producers to relocate their operations to Mexico for products ultimately headed to America.  This was costing America the loss of a huge number of jobs. But of course, this had provided Mexico with much of its employment.  But Trump wanted this renegotiated.

Other items were also renegotiated: the auto trade (obviously Mexican-produced cars are much cheaper than American-produced cars, mostly because of the difference in wage rates and workers' benefits), but also intellectual property rights, and the trade in vital goods such as farm and dairy products (actually highly protected in the US), drugs, oil, steel, aluminum, lumber and raw materials.

In order to get America's trade partners to act on these trade issues, Trump had, soon after taking office as U.S. president, threatened to pull America entirely out of NAFTA.  To underscore his resolve to see things renegotiated, he imposed new tariffs on Canadian and Mexican steel and aluminum.  Talks got underway, and went on for a year before an agreeable settlement could be reached: the USMCA.

Trump was pleased with his negotiating success.  But it raised questions about the continuing availability of inexpensive cars from Mexico on the American market, trade protections favoring certain American producers usually always translating themselves into greater costs for the American consumer.  Ultimately a Democrat-controlled House dragged its feet on approving the new trade agreement – finally at the very end of 2019 coming to a compromise more favorable to American labor and environmentalist groups, which then opened the possibility of Congressional approval.

Another big problem hitting America at its borders had long been the huge influx of Central Americans attempting to escape the chaos of a collapsed social order in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.  Thugs and gangs constituted whatever social order now existed in these states, especially in Honduras.  This urge to escape these terrifying conditions was not new, but reached crisis proportions in the early 2010s, only increasing in scope since then, as hundreds of thousands of Central Americans streamed north through Mexico to get across the quite porous national borders of America where, once inside, they could disappear into the growing Latin-American community now widespread across America.  By the time of Trump's entry into the White House whole caravans of tens of thousands of Central Americans were filling the Mexican highways, headed to America.

Even in the days of his campaigning for the presidency, Trump boasted about a wall he was going to build to stop this ethnic invasion from Central America, and that Mexico was going to pay for it!  Nobody believed that was ever going to happen, but it certainly made for much heated discussion.  Ultimately, "Trump's Wall" became (along with his impeachment) a subject of intense coverage by the sensation-seeking media.

Actually, the issue was even more complex in that these caravans headed for the U.S. included not only Central Americans but Africans, Middle Easterners and others, with the same goal of getting inside the US. And there were other motives mixed in with the desperation to escape chaotic conditions in the refugees' homelands: drug trafficking, children trafficking (having an "accompanying child" was known to open the legal doors of American access more easily), and the possibility that people bent on doing harm to America (such as Islamic jihadists) became a matter of concern, a concern that Trump emphasized at every opportunity.

He wanted this invasion of America to stop.  But this in turn brought out all the anti-Trump voices who claimed that America was a "welcoming nation" and that even the idea of the border itself was a cruel concept that needed to be ended – simply ignoring the fact that the "cruelties" being committed by Trump in blocking this flow of refugees to America were the very same activities done under the laws and practices occurring during the Obama presidency.  But since it was Trump rather than Obama now standing behind these same restrictions and procedures, all of this now was so much more heartless and cruel.

Immigrants, as everyone well knows, tend to support a party that will take care of them.  And that was, after all, the central agenda of the Democratic Party: to have Washington take care of those who have become dependent on that care.  It's a semi-feudal political instinct that goes all the way back to the regimes of the American urban bosses who did the same thing with immigrant groups, notably the Irish and Southern Italians, who flooded the country in the 1800s and early 1900s. Now it was the Hispanics turn to see how that worked.  And they were quite aware of the deal.  That's why they were heading north in such great numbers.

However, under the threat of more restrictions on Mexican trade to America, the Mexican government agreed finally (June 2019) to help slow up, with militarized police, the flow of the caravans through Mexico, and to house some of the asylum seekers while they awaited their claims as refugees to be processed by the US.

Actually, finding a solution to this problem is of critical importance to America – not just because of the huge number of individuals and families attempting to flee the conditions there and find refuge in the US, but because it is America's job still to stand as a light to and support of other societies on this globe.  That is the responsibility of a global superpower, especially a Christian superpower.

Something like a Marshall Plan for the crisis countries of Guatemala, El Salvador and especially Honduras would be far more effective than merely building expensive walls to keep the refugees out.  Setting up job training and encouraging (even partially subsidizing) American producers, who have been using low-cost Chinese labor, to now work with Central American workers, would be a big help to both U.S. industry and those Central American countries suffering massive social collapse.  It would require a lot of careful, and expensive, investment.  But so did the Marshall Plan, an outstanding success and a wonderful thing that a Christian America did for the world, even for its recent enemies.

Meanwhile, even further to the South, the Venezuelan Socialist regime of Nicolás Maduro (taking over in 2013 at the death of the originator of Venezuela's Cuba-like "Socialist Revolution," Hugo Chavez) was finding itself presiding over a collapsing economy, due in part to its program of heavy-handed – even brutal – Socialism, but also worsened by America's (and others) 2017 embargo on Venezuelan exports, such as its rich supply in oil, and imports such as food and medicine.

Potentially here too, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans would want to gain similar entry into America, to escape the deplorable (even murderous) conditions that had come to prevail in Venezuela.  From 2015 to mid-2019 over 4 million Venezuelans, or 12 percent of the population, escaped Venezuela, however mostly heading to nearby South American countries or to the Caribbean islands, and some, from there, onwards.

America (and its European allies) had supported Maduro's opponent, Juan Guaidó, in the highly questionable 2018 elections under the new (pro-Maduro) Constitution.  The situation resulting from these elections had become so chaotic in Venezuela that it was hard to distinguish the better from the worse.  Predictably, China, Russia, Cuba, Iran and Syria (but also Turkey?) came out in strong support of Maduro's regime, which maintained a strong backing of the Venezuelan army, and was thus not yet likely to be toppled, despite Maduro's huge unpopularity among major sectors of the Venezuelan population, and even despite American efforts to shut down the Venezuelan economy.

While America had itself engaged morning, noon and night, on one talk-show after another, debating the scandal of the Trump-Russia connection, China was quietly advancing its political, economic and diplomatic position around the globe.  China, under its potential President-for-Life, Xi Jinping,¹ was moving ever forward in a grand effort to replace America as the world's leading superpower – even the only superpower still standing after America would take its inevitable fall, as had every other Western superpower since the decline of Spain in the 1600s and 1700s (even just in the 20th century alone: France, England, the Netherlands, Russia, etc.)

This goal became quite clear back in 2015 when Xi announced a new Chinese 10-Year Plan, "Made in China 2025."  The heart of the Plan involved the development of a number of areas in the realm of high-technology, economic realms which would receive a large amount of government protection and support, designed to give China a commanding position in the international technology market (robotics, telecommunications, artificial intelligence or AI in a wide range of fields, etc.), in the biomedical market, in industrial materials development, and in the establishment of global purchasing and sales networks.

The international strategy or game that China played was a subtle one: avoid direct confrontation where possible, but gradually (and quietly) take a vital position of control here and there, in small bites, of course, so as not to spark a reaction from America and the West at any particular point.²

Anyway, America had been so distracted with events in the Middle East since the beginning of the 21st century that it was not really paying attention to what was coming out of East Asia.  Bush, Jr. was so wrapped up in Afghanistan and Iraq that he had no time to focus on developments in East Asia.  And Obama thought he could charm the world into niceness, failing to respond strongly to challenges to America's vital points of placement on the global playing field.

Also, it is important to note that China alone mines most of the world market's "rare metals" vitally needed by today's technology (such as cobalt), and a shutdown, or even slowdown, would cripple the ability of the world beyond China to continue to develop that technology.  These metals are also found elsewhere outside of China, though very expensive to process.  It is a lot easier to depend on the Chinese supply.  And China, and the world, both know this.

Furthermore, the number of American (and other Western) companies that depend on cheap Chinese labor to assemble parts or even the whole of their products prior to market is incredibly large.  Thus now to find their products even marketable, they depend entirely on their "China connection."  Again, China – and the world – are well aware of this growing dependency.

Also, in China companies such as Alibaba and Tencent have moved to near monopolistic positions in a wide range of areas (somewhat similar to Amazon in the way such companies control financial transactions in a wide range of industries), including purchases of companies abroad.  This includes even American companies, such as Alibaba's proposal to purchase the American company MoneyGram – until the U.S. government's Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) stepped in to block the sale.

At the same time, China has long been offering a lot of foreign aid to smaller countries.  Multitudes of Chinese technologists can be found all around the world, helping smaller countries develop – using Chinese equipment and technology that in the long run would make them China-dependent.

Also very importantly, China by 2019 was offering the world the new 5G internet technology, the highly advanced technology following up Huawei Technology's 4G telecommunications network and consumer products sales, also strategically located globally.  Huawei offered top-level communications technology and products at rock-bottom prices through Chinese government price support (and research services support), putting this Chinese company at the head and heart of the world telecommunications industry, by which the world's commerce was managed.  Just like the South China Sea naval-air station, and the global rare-metals siting, this put China in the position on its diplomatic game-board of full dominance.

To put this plan on a solid basis, in April of 2019, Xi hosted an international gathering to discuss his "Belt and Road" program, linking the Chinese economy with the economies of other countries, even in Europe.  Some 40 countries attended (America did not attend, nor did China's chief rival in Asia, India).

Meanwhile, Trump had long been complaining about the Chinese theft of American intellectual property (critically important in the technology field), and the subsidizing of their own Chinese companies in order to give them a competitive edge on the world market, even in America (this certainly was the case with Huawei products). Trump was also very upset at the way Chinese companies had bought up American companies, quite notably in the high-tech field (estimates ran to as much as $46 billion worth of Chinese investment as of 2016), whereas the Chinese made foreign investment in their country prohibitively difficult.

Thus Trump in March of 2018 invoked the 1974 Trade Act to block further Chinese acquisition of American high-tech companies, also announcing the imposing of new tariffs as of the beginning of 2019 on $250 billion worth of Chinese goods seeking entry into the U.S. – tariffs doubling from 10 percent to 25 percent of the value of these Chinese goods.  Not surprisingly, China retaliated with its announcement that it would be imposing duties on $110 billion worth of American goods coming into China.  However, other countries joined America in also putting new tariffs on Chinese goods.  Finally, in December of 2018, just as the tariffs were due to go into effect, the two sides decided to try to negotiate some kind of compromise, especially as these tariffs hurt both economies.  They were proposing to arrive at an agreement by mid-May of 2019.  But ultimately even these efforts at a compromise found the going so rough that nothing came of the negotiations.  The trade war thus merely deepened.

Anyway, trust in the actual enforcement of any agreed-on terms by China remains a huge American concern, as the Chinese have long been known to find clever ways of getting around the rules of trade as set out by the World Trade Organization (WTO).

But America is not the only country becoming very suspicious of Chinese economic programming.  Australia also has been the recipient of massive Chinese investment by way of the purchasing of Australian companies in key fields.  Finally in 2016, the Australian government put up roadblocks preventing China from buying up Australian companies in the key fields of agriculture and electric power generation and supply.  Germany and France have also become wary about Chinese strategic investment, and the dumping of subsidized (and thus cheaper) Chinese products on the European market, and have begun to press the European Union to tighten up on Chinese economic activity in Europe.

¹In March of 2018, the National People's Congress voted 2,964 to 2 to remove the Constitution's two-term limits on the presidency – limits observed since the reforms of Deng Xiaoping in the 1990s.  This is quite indicative of how Xi had eliminated the collective leadership of the country in order to make himself the sole determiner of China's policies and programs, something not seen in China since the days of Mao Zedong but something that looked a bit like the situation still going on in North Korea – where the Great Leader does the thinking for all the people.

²Newt Gingrich likened it to the difference between the West's most sophisticated board game, chess, and the Chinese counterpart, Weiqi (or Go).  Chess is played by carefully moving particular pieces with varying importance or power, focusing on throwing that weight at the two most valuable of all pieces, the queen and then the king.  But Weiqi is played on a larger board with many, but equal, pieces – in which the goal is simply to place each piece in a particular stationary position on the board until one or the other of the adversaries finds itself so surrounded that it cannot move another piece into place.  Subtle, but an effective path to victory.  "China wants to replace America as THE global superpower – Here's what we must learn," Fox News, April 25, 2019.

Another potential president-for-life, Russia's Vladimir Putin, was slowly dragging Russia out of its 1990s collapse into a Third-World status – in his quest to bring Russia back again as a world power.  Russia still had all the nuclear toys it needed (and more) to make it a very dangerous player. A nd its well-developed military machinery made it a country to be noticed again.

But most importantly, Putin was playing the international game most skillfully, taking advantage especially of America's many self-inflicted diplomatic and political wounds, and also, like China, attempting to make Russia "useful" to other countries around the world.  Putin's game resembled somewhat Xi's game.  In fact the two declared something of a truce and began working together, especially in the matter of dealing with superpower America.

Thus for instance Putin rushed in to aid Syrian President Assad after Obama foolishly attempted to bring down Assad for engaging in illegal weapons use against Syrian rebels.  In the end Obama only helped to deepen the Syrian agony – and the flight of millions of Syrian refugees to the neighboring world.

Likewise Putin began to work more closely with Iran, whose new treaty with America Trump rejected with the claim that it was too one-sided of a deal.  Thus both Russia and Iran moved into Syria as Assad allies, giving these new Syrian allies vitally strategic positions on the Eastern borders of the Mediterranean Sea, something long sought by Russia – and even longer-sought by ancient Persia, of which the Iranians are Persia's modern version.

Similarly, Putin (as well as Xi's Chinese, plus the Iranians and North Koreans) rushed in to help Socialist Maduro keep his dictatorial grip over a starving Venezuela, at a time when America was attempting to isolate Maduro and see him replaced by a pro-capitalist leader, Guaidó (thus reopening the oil-rich country to such wealth as might feed its people once again).

And the Russians used their oil and gas industries to put an energy-hungry but resource-poor Europe linked to, and thus dependent on, Russian exports of these vital commodities.  Even America found itself helpless to assist its European allies in retreating from this energy-dependent relationship with Russia, especially in the matter of the gas that was piped directly and cheaply from Russia to Germany. This Europe-Russia connection was all done in the name of international peace and harmony.  But in fact, it was also done on the basis of old-fashioned power considerations. Putin was/is no fool.

But most challenging to America is the new relationship that Putin and Xi have been developing between Russia and China, with the obvious intent of strengthening their positions in opposition to the American position in international affairs.  As trade relations between China and America weaken, due to new restrictions imposed by both America and China over the matter of trade and intellectual property protection, the economic ties between Russia and China have expanded considerably.  Putin and Xi are working together on the development of China's Maritime Silk Road across the newly open waters of the Arctic above Siberia, at the same time Russia has been moving to complete its Power of Siberia Pipeline so as to send a much-increased volume of natural gas to a hungry Chinese market. The two countries are also cooperating in the development of the new 5G network, also linking Russia more closely to China, as well as in other areas of infrastructure and technology development.

Then there was the matter of North Korea.  The relationship between Kim and Trump varied from friendly to very bitter – pretty much based on the matter of exactly how willing North Korea was in bringing nuclear and missile development under some kind of limitation.  Things got very intense when in 2017 Kim ordered the testing of a number of intermediate-range missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads.  Then in 2018 Kim initiated talks with Trump over the suspending of nuclear and long-range missile tests.  But the talks did not go well and American (and international) economic sanctions against North Korea remained strongly in place.

In late 2019 Kim issued attention-getting threats to the world (America and its Asian allies principally) by ordering a new round of testing of his missiles. Some saw this as a probing of Trump's resolve – when Trump took no countering action after Iran in June of 2019 shot down an American surveillance drone over the Straits of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf.  Certainly the takedown of Soleimani, however, probably helped Kim get a better picture of Trump's resolve when pushed more seriously.

However, whether a very dangerous North Korea would back down and try again to work out some kind of working relationship with the larger world (or not) remained/remains a matter of serious concern for everyone.

At the same time, Trump's relations with Europe seemed to have been as stormy as they had been with Congress.  Even at the announcement of his election, pro-Hillary and anti-Trump demonstrations broke out across Europe (and elsewhere in the world), obviously not spontaneous but showing signs of some considerable organization and pre-event planning behind them.  The political Left in Europe, which is vastly more extensive than it is in America, was dedicatedly anti-Trump from the very beginning of his campaign for the presidency.

Trump's visits as American President to Europe were accompanied by protests in the streets, again not exactly spontaneous events.  But in general, his frosty relations with European political leaders (Germany's Merkel made no secret of how much she detested Trump) warmed up a bit over time, although the Trump mouth made that "thaw" all the more difficult to achieve – and then maintain.

His threat to pull out of NATO if America's allies did not do more to support the military alliance did not endear him much to those allies either!  But in the end the pressure did result in some of America's allies moving up to meet their full financial responsibilities towards NATO.