The best way to understand President Donald Trump’s foreign policy successes — or quasi-successes — is to imagine him as the heir to a family fortune who thinks he is building a business even as he is, in reality, slowly squandering his inheritance.
But stay with me — because, unlike with his private business dealings, the legacy Trump is frittering away belongs to us all.
Take his recent dust-up with Mexico. For the purposes of this argument, it doesn't matter whether you think Mexico responded to Trump's tariff threats with genuine, substantial concessions or warmed-over restatements of past agreements.