WASHINGTON — When President Obama
travels to North Carolina and Europe this week, he will press an
argument that could define foreign policy in the last six months of his
presidency:
that Americans and Europeans must not forsake their open,
interconnected societies for the nativism and nationalism preached by
Donald J. Trump or Britain’s Brexiteers.
Few
presidents have put more faith than Mr. Obama in the power of words to
persuade audiences to accept a complex idea, whether it is the morality
of a just war or the imperfect nature of American society. Yet
countering the anti-immigration and anti-free-trade slogans in this
election year will require all of his oratorical skills.
Mr. Obama road-tested his pitch over the last two weeks in two friendly venues: Silicon Valley and Canada. This week, he will take the case to North Carolina,
a swing state that has been hard hit by the forces of globalization,
and to a NATO meeting in Poland, where the alliance members will grapple with the effects of Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, known as Brexit.
In Warsaw, Mr. Obama will sit next to Britain’s lame-duck prime minister, David Cameron, whose political career was ended by his miscalculation over holding the referendum
on European Union membership. But first, in Charlotte, N.C., he will
campaign with Hillary Clinton, his former secretary of state and the
presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, who reversed her position on Mr. Obama’s Asian trade deal, formally called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, after many in her party turned sharply against free trade.
“President
Obama has made a valiant attempt to build support for freer trade,”
said Eswar S. Prasad, a professor of trade policy at Cornell University.
“But the arguments in favor of free trade lack rhetorical and political
resonance, especially amidst a heated political campaign.”
The
case for ambitious trade deals, Dr. Prasad said, is that they allow the
United States to set the rules for its dealings with other countries,
and to wield greater geopolitical influence. Yet those arguments are
easily overshadowed by the simple, if dubious, assertion that the losses
to the American economy from these deals are greater than the benefits.
“Obama’s
ability to sway the debate about free trade has been hampered by those
in his own party feeling the heat from constituents who are up in arms
about weak employment and wage growth,” Dr. Prasad said.
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White
House officials said Mr. Obama would not hesitate to make a strong case
for the Trans-Pacific Partnership on the campaign trail. But Josh
Earnest, the press secretary, said the president’s remarks on Tuesday in
Charlotte would probably focus more on areas where he and Mrs. Clinton
agreed.
Then, in Europe, Mr. Obama may find a more receptive audience, given the deep misgivings over the British vote.
“His
timing is pretty good,” said David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to
Mr. Obama. “If he arrived the week before, the party would have been
rip-roaring. Now everybody is sitting there with an ice pack on their
forehead. They might be ready to listen to some sensible advice.”
The
departure of Britain from the European Union is likely to have
significant, if not immediate, effects on Europe’s security. Some
experts express fear that it will weaken the response to Russian
aggression in Ukraine, for example. At the Warsaw meeting, a senior
administration official said, Mr. Obama plans to emphasize the need for
the European Union to cooperate more closely with NATO.
This
has long been a goal of the United States, but the exit of Britain from
the union makes it more urgent, said the official, who spoke on the
condition of anonymity in advance of the NATO meeting. NATO and the
European Union could collaborate in countering cyberattacks,
coordinating military exercises and patrolling the central
Mediterranean.
But
Britain’s departure could pose problems for NATO. European diplomats
said they expected France and Germany to consider closer military
integration within the European Union — something Britain and the United
States have resisted because they view it as competing with the
alliance.
Mr. Obama spoke out publicly against a “leave” vote
when he visited Britain in April, and the outcome of that debate was
perhaps a harbinger of the challenges he faces in resisting
antiglobalism at home. In his speeches, he emphasizes that leaders must
recognize the fears and resentments that people feel because of economic
dislocation.
“For them, globalization is inherently rigged toward the top 1 percent,” Mr. Obama said in an address to the Canadian Parliament. “I understand that vision. I know why it’s tempting.”
The problem, the president said, is that it is too late to turn back.
“Restricting trade or giving in to protectionism
in this 21st-century economy will not work,” Mr. Obama said. “Even if
we wanted to, we can’t seal ourselves off from the rest of the world.
The day after Brexit, people looked around and said: ‘Oh! How is this
going to work?’”
By
recognizing people’s fears while making the case for an interconnected
world, Mr. Axelrod said, the president has found the “sweet spot” in the
debate. But telling people that they can do nothing to stem the tide of
globalization is not a particularly appealing message.
At times, it seems that Mr. Obama has suffered his own dislocation. In Ottawa on Wednesday, he took part in a news conference
with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada and President Enrique Peña
Nieto of Mexico that was dominated by questions about Mr. Trump and the
British vote.
While Mr. Trudeau was talking about whether Canada would export more hydroelectric
power to the United States, Mr. Obama began scribbling notes. When it
was his turn to speak, he abruptly veered into a discussion of the
meaning of populism, a term often used to describe the political appeals
made by Mr. Trump or the pro-Brexit campaigners.
“I’m
not prepared to concede the notion that some of the rhetoric that’s
been popping up is populist,” Mr. Obama said. He described his own
agenda as populist, in that he wanted to help ordinary people get
economic opportunities, working mothers get child care and children get
access to education. A candidate who has never worked on behalf of
social justice or the interests of the poor, he said, could not be a
populist.
“That’s not the measure of populism,” Mr. Obama said. “That’s nativism. Or xenophobia. Or worse.”
When
he had finished, an obviously worked-up Mr. Obama apologized for the
digression, saying that as he neared the end of his presidency, he felt
entitled to go “on these occasional rants.”
The
next day, Mr. Earnest was asked if the president planned any more of
these rants. “Considering we’ve got another six and a half months to go
before the end of the presidency,” he replied, “I think it’s likely
we’re all going to get to enjoy at least one more.”
Obama is ginuess!!
