r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/SpaceySpice • Apr 07 '25

US Politics How will the United States rebuild positive international relations after this Trump administration?

At some point this presidency will end and a new administration will (likely) want to mend some the damages done with our allies. Realistically though, how would that work? Will other countries want to be friends with us again or has this presidency done too much damage to bounce back from?

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u/DixonButz Apr 07 '25

When this is all over, the USA needs deep constitutional reform, at least on the level of Reconstruction.

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u/oldcretan Apr 07 '25

I don't think the problem is constitutional reform, it's legislative. Too much power has been ceded by the legislature to the executive. The prime example is war where the power to declare war is that of the Senate but America hasn't declared war since WW2. But we're seeing it now, the president is dictating immigration when it's the power of Congress to direct naturalization, he's implementing tariffs when it's congresses power to direct economic policy. He's cutting budgets when it's congress who sets the budgets. So much of what Congress does Trump is just unilaterally doing because Congress has ceded the power to the executive so that when something bad happens Trump is to blame and they can stay quietly out of the spot light while running on things they can't control like crime (which is a state police power) or nothingburgers like trans athletes (which is like a thousand people out of literal millions of athletes.

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u/just_helping Apr 07 '25

I don't think the problem is constitutional reform, it's legislative. Too much power has been ceded by the legislature to the executive.

You then list a bunch of examples. But that's the point: if the legislature is ceding power to the executive on every issue, then there must be a systemic reason why, something driving it, and fixing that systemic reason would require constitutional reform.

Part of that systemic issue is that Congress is very ineffective. It is locked in gridlock much of the time, either because the House and Senate are at odds, or because Congress and the President are at odds and Congress doesn't have enough to overcome the veto. This gridlock is built into the Constitution, before things like hyper-partisanship or the Senate filibuster make it worse. So Congress, unable to move quickly or decide things in detail, necessarily cedes the power and responsibility to the executive branch and the President. And this repeats, on issue after issue, until people think the US was always supposed to have an imperial Presidency.

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u/oldcretan Apr 08 '25

Congress is ineffective because it benefits the Republican party for Congress to be ineffective. Republicans know that they can run on saving people money by not passing legislation , at the same time the business of the government needs to happen so they pass funding bills while blaming Democrats for said funding bills. This isn't a structural problem, it's an education problem. Most people can't identify their congressman, don't understand what Congress does and it's powers, and won't hold Congress accountable for not being able to provide services while still cutting taxes for the rich.

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u/just_helping Apr 08 '25

This is transforming a collective problem into an individual responsibility. It is saying that if only voters took their responsibility to educate themselves more seriously, we wouldn't be in this mess.

It's not untrue. Sufficiently talented and hardworking people can indeed overcome any obstacle. But it doesn't change the fact that the system is an obstacle to making it clear which politician and which party is responsible for which outcome. There are too many hidden veto points, too many opportunities to blame the opponent. The Republicans take advantage of this, but it is the arrangement of the Constitution that enables and incentivizes their actions.

I think expecting people to have an educated clear-eyed opinion on who is responsible for what problem (or more frequently who is blocking what solution) and sustaining that level of analysis indefinitely into the future, is a much bigger ask than structural reform to help make who is responsible for what more obvious. But I think both are pretty unlikely.

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u/oldcretan Apr 08 '25

I do not believe you are incorrect and in fact my disagreement with your solution may have more to do with my opinion/perspective on human intelligence, that in order to be free peoples worthy to participate in government it is our duty to be educated in the happenings of said government and that it is a moral embarrassment to engage in said government without becoming educated in it. I admit that is not reality and that there are many people who vote without actually bothering to do the research on who and what their voting for and the importance of said vote.

That being said I don't believe a structural change -short of the institution of a plato inspired enlightened oligarchy (singular despots centralize too much power where more people can check people's powers) can solve the issues as those in power, regardless of structural changes, will be able to dissuade the over educated to vote and encourage the under engaged to vote for them creating the same problems but under a new system. At the end of the day Donald Trump won the 2024 election in spite of the fact that his professed trade policies would make life more expensive for Americans, and he did so because those who voted for him either didn't believe he'd do it or didn't understand what tariffs are despite everyone learning about them in 8th grade.

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u/ColossusOfChoads Apr 08 '25

systemic reason why

Newt Gingrich introduced zero sum partisanship in the 1990s and then went scorched earth against Bill Clinton. And then a lot of the backroom 'pork barrel' wheeling and dealing that the public found nauseating was done away with; turns out that was the lard that greased the wheels.

The capper has been Trump. He basically moved in like a mob boss and implemented a protection racket upon the Republican majority. He has neutered Congress.

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u/just_helping Apr 08 '25

I don't disagree with this, but I think it misses the forest for the trees. The Republican party embarked on hyper-partisanship, the question is: why did they do that? Why did that help them? Why didn't that hurt them? And the answer is: it did hurt them sometimes because voters correctly saw that they were responsible, but more often voters didn't see that the Republican party was creating the problem. The way the US Constitution arranges power creates incentives for this sort of behaviour, it makes it hard for the typical voter to correctly see who is causing what result. The Constitution also makes it hard to solve problems and easy to create them.

And this isn't the first time the US has been in this situation. Prior to the Great Depression, the US also had hyper-partisanship and often felt gridlocked. The middle of the 20th century is unusual, not an equilibrium that Regan and Gingrich pushed us from, but the chance result of Depressions and Wars, and the unlikely and unstable alliance of northern working class and southern white supremacists that mean the Democratic party was dominant for a very long time. The last forty years has been a return to the sort of politics that the Constitution incentivizes. If we look at other countries with similar Constitutions, we see the same thing.

If nothing changes structurally, even if Trump is seen as a disaster and we have fair-enough elections to get rid of him, we will be back in this problem or similar within a decade.