Foreign Policy

Matthew Petti | 9.6.2024 10:20 AM

The foreign policy debate this year has been an exercise in Democrats and Republicans trying to outhawk each other. Gone are the days when both parties pretended to be interested in ending "endless wars." Now, Vice President Kamala Harris insists that former President Donald Trump was a weakling for avoiding nuclear war with North Korea, while Trump claims that he would have kept U.S. forces in Afghanistan in order to fight China.

This week, the Harris campaign brought up a new line of attack. Trump is too willing to lift economic sanctions on Iran and Russia, based on comments he made on Thursday. But four years ago, Harris' own national security adviser, Phil Gordon, had attacked Trump for being too unwilling to lift sanctions. And the current Secretary of the Treasury, Janet Yellen, agrees with Trump's position on the downside of sanctions.

In a Thursday speech to The Economic Club of New York, Trump bragged that "I was a user of sanctions, but I put them on and take them off as quickly as possible, because ultimately it kills your dollar and kills everything the dollar represents. We have to continue to have that be the world currency." He added, "You're losing Iran. You're losing Russia. China is out there trying to get their currency to be the dominant currency."

Trump was echoing a common (and obvious) criticism made by economists. Cutting enemies off from the U.S. financial........

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