I think Trump is not a transactional president, rather a fast-actional president! Here’s Why:

Before I even start, I have to mention that I am not a Trump supporter. First of all, I'm not even an American citizen, so it does not absolutely matter if I support Trump or not. Secondly, because I'm not an American citizen, I'm not going to talk about his policies within the country—rather, his foreign policy, or at least what I understand of it. As I mentioned in my bio, I am a nobody and I just see things through my own lens. I'm trying to figure out the world through myself. Anyways, let's get started, shall we?

So, I do not like how most news outlets, except maybe Fox News, call President Donald Trump a transactional president. The main reason for them to call Trump a transactional president is because he makes deals in real time. Now, what do I mean by deals in real time, and how is it different from past presidents making deals? To understand this, we have to really go back into history—and more specifically during the Cold War—to understand this phenomenon.

Now, since the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was competition between the US and the USSR for essentially world dominance. And we all know how that played out and how we, as the human race, came the closest to destroying ourselves. Not saying that we are much farther from that currently, but that's a topic for another day. But I want to talk about how the US used its economic power to gain influence in many countries around the world, including Europe itself. It basically took a transactional approach—but not in real time.

Essentially, what the US did was invest in different countries so that they would pay off in different ways later down the line—be it through loyalty to the US or direct support, like allowing their oil and gas or natural resources to be taken by the US. How the US and also the USSR operated during the Cold War was that they would invest, say, $100 billion around the world in different countries, but over time, they would make back a trillion dollars, through different means. That's really essentially how the world worked during the Cold War.

However, the US really continued to do this even after the fall of the Soviet Union. We have seen the US maintain their influence through investing in different countries throughout the '90s and the early 2000s. It is still with the same idea—that you invest this much money today, but over the course of time, you gain a lot more back. That was still transactional too, but it wasn't real time. You can call it advanced payments for services that were expected later on. And isn't Saddam Hussein a case where the return wasn't great enough, so they had to take him out? Not saying the individual countries didn't benefit from this too. The biggest examples are Germany, Japan, and South Korea. At times, the US also helped out dictatorial regimes to stay in power, so it was always a give-and-take transaction in a broader sense.

So, how does that measure up to Donald Trump’s transactional approach? Let's talk about it.

First of all, we need to talk about the tariff war. Being the pioneer of capitalism, the US really couldn't impose tariffs before. During the Soviet Union era, the whole ideological fight between the US and the USSR was exactly this- a battle between free market and communism. The point the US tried to make was that free trade is better for all. And of course, America took a hit because of this by allowing different countries to take advantage of America’s free market system. But the losses were nothing in comparison to their gains. The fact that they were able to defeat the Soviet Union at the end of the day just shows that. Like I said before, America may have invested a trillion dollars but came out with a hundred trillion by the end of it all.

What Trump is doing is he is taking a 10-15, or 20-year timeframe of transactions and squeezing it into his term, essentially. Instead of making investments today that will pay off in 20 years, he's ensuring that he's getting a return on his investments immediately. The tariff war is basically a tool to get the countries to sit down at the negotiating table so that he can make his famous deals. I have never believed that the tariff war was about economics. It was always about bringing the parties into negotiations—including the European Union.

And the EU is, of course, another story that I could go on for pages—about how the US heavily invested in this region so that they are always aligned with the US hegemony. Now, all that has come to a standstill because of Trump's fast-actional approach. And even if the tariffs were about economics, I don't think Donald Trump would have walked back on many of those tariffs. Of course, China is the outlier case here, which again can be talked about for pages after pages.

Trump has also shown his fast-actional approach on Ukraine. His idea is that if he can stop the war in Ukraine and make a deal with Ukraine and Russia, he'll be able to make money for America from both sides of the conflict. It's a win-win situation for the US in that case. And let me ask you this question: If a Democrat was president and they continued to fuel the war until Russia is forced to go back to its territory, do you not think they would have taken advantage of Ukraine’s minerals? Of course they would! Only that it wouldn’t have been overtly open like Donald Trump, but a minerals deal would have happened too- only with a different name or packaging.

This has been the case all around the world. The US fueled wars in different places to get returns over long periods of time. We even see Trump’s fast-actional approach in the India-Pakistan conflict as well, where he sort of kind of took Pakistan’s side because Pakistan had major mineral deals with him prior to the conflict. And again, we see this in the Gaza war, where he is planning to build a Riviera. Not really sure how that's going to benefit the US economically, but I can tell you one thing: If Trump is able to find a solution to the whole Israel-Palestine conflict, the world will accept him as the de facto leader. Even the countries that are not as friendly to the US will see the US in a whole different light. If it was me, I would have given him the Nobel Peace Prize every year till his death if he can bring a two-state solution. It's not a matter of joke solving a 5,000-year-old problem. Yeah, it's not an October 7th problem, it's not a 1967 problem, or even a 1948 problem—it is really a 5,000-year-old problem that Donald Trump will be solving if he is able to bring a two-state solution. And what will that do for America? It will give Trump and America eternal glory.

Does his fast-actional approach have issues? Yeah, it does. The biggest issue is that the world hasn’t seen America act like that—ever, really. I can already see that the world is taking notes and dealing accordingly with the US. If it really becomes the new norm, then we might see countries go to the US for their problems in return for certain products—like minerals or whatever the US might need.

If I'm gonna be honest, this is a better approach than before. The main reason why I say this is because at least in those countries, people would know what the deal is—what they're giving up in return for getting the US’s favor or assistance. We would not be in ambiguous situations where the US would operate covertly. I mean, of course, that reality is still very far away, but this could be the first step towards that direction.

How will that pan out economically? I have no clue!! Listen, I'm just your average nobody!