Steve Bannon predicts a constitutional crisis by summer | Morning Edition | NPR (youtube.com)
Bannon talks about how, to defend the Suez, America has a couple battleships there, while European countries have their own smaller batteships, and how it's disproportionate, and other countries have to start picking this up as America spends on itself. Fine, but keep in mind that Trump has all this leverage currently to get countries to do things he wants, to give him better deals, because America has disproportionately distributed to other places. They have been able to just tell other countries what to do and the countries do it, because they can pull things away from those countries. It's kind of like a foating leverage, one fixed expense that allows them to make unlimited demands. With Europe, it's security. In places like Colombia, US just gave them like $500m a year or something. With China, the US was a great consumer. With Israel, it's protection. With KSA, it's power. Maybe with Mexico, it's access to a higher standard of comfort.
If the US balances trade, makes other countries self-sufficient and fully contributing partners, responsible states, the US will have much less bargaining power with them. It will become a sort of an equal partner. You could propose that US will save so much it can later offer a nice thing in exchange for a favor from these countries, but that's doubtful because generally US politicians spend every dollar they get plus go into debt, so any benefits they get from evening out trade, they will spend out, and won't have anything saved to offer these states something special, plus these states once independent and responsible won't really need special things from the US. However, it's possible that if the US spends and increases it's military, it could leverage that out.