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Bremmer: Trump has 3 big foreign policy wins his predecessors couldn't get, but his methods come with major risks

President Donald Trump's foreign policy stock is up a little over a year in office.

  • A little over a year in office, President Donald Trump's foreign policy stock is up.
  • Part of that has to do with his unconventional approach to dealing with both friends and foes.
  • But his tactics carry risks with them, and those wins could sour.

President Donald Trump has notched three notable foreign policy successes amid the acrimony of his first year in office, according to Ian Bremmer, president of geopolitical-risk firm Eurasia Group.

The wins hit three major hotspots — South Korea, North Korea, and Syria — but, as Bremmer explains, each comes with its own risks.

Most recently, at the end of March, senior US officials detailed the agreement reached with South Korea in principle to revise a trade deal first implemented in 2012.

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Trump had slammed the previous deal as "horrible" and a "job killer," and US officials heralded the revision as "visionary and innovative."

With the new arrangement, US automakers can send up to 50,000 cars that meet US safety standards to South Korea, up from 25,000. Any cars beyond the new threshold will have to meet South Korean safety standards, which US companies say put them at a disadvantage. (No US carmaker sold more than 11,000 vehicles in South Korea in 2017.)

The revised deal also limits South Korean steel exports to the US and includes a provision preventing either country from weakening its currency to make its exports cheaper, though the latter provision lacks an enforcement mechanism.

Even with those stipulations, Bremmer said, "t

Those talks are likely to happen in May, but before the sides even sit down, their prospects look dim.

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Both sides have expressed interest in denuclearization. Trump has mused about it, criticizing the South Koreans for not paying the US to defend them and suggesting allies in the region develop their own nuclear deterrents. But Kim Jong Un has always mentioned denuclearization in the context of the whole peninsula, ridding it of US forces.

"To be clear, what the Americans say they want and what the North Koreans are prepared to deliver is unbridgeable," Bremmer wrote. The Trump administration's approach to proliferation elsewhere in Asia also looms over talks with Pyongyang.

"After all, if the Trump administration now rips up the terms of the Iran nuclear deal, right after it was negotiated and signed by the Obama administration — unilaterally deciding they don't like it so they're leaving — what would stop the Americans from doing the same to North Korea?" Bremmer added.

Similar peril exists in Trump's approach to Syria. Assad and his allies appear to have gained the advantage after seven years of brutal civil war. His removal looks unlikely, as Russia and Iran wield more influence, Bremmer said.

Moreover, there looks likely to be less resistance in the White House to Trump's instinct to pull out, according to Bremmer, as no one has a "winning strategy" to offer and many of Trump's supporters are hostile to US military engagement in far-off places.

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