Critics adore the passion the 47th president of the United States continues to pour over the 25th.
Donald Trump, who likes to call himself Mr. Price, deems earlier price advocate William McKinley a wonderful, undervalued president. Weeks after Trump’s inauguration next month, he restored McKinley’s title to the Alaska hills that Native Americans there call Denali.
McKinley is not one of the greatest president, according to the majority of historians, despite two new biographies that present him in a more favorable light.
The experts have been given everything fresh to talk about by Trump’s curiosity with McKinley. Trump reads McKinley incorrectly about taxes, according to one river in the remark.
In a Wall Street Journal article, Republican political operative Karl Rove, the creator of one of those histories, provides some convincing arguments.
As chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, McKinley favored levies but was concerned that Congress was putting them too high. Afterwards, as president, he championed lowering taxes on trading partners ‘ items if they lowered theirs on ours.
As Robert W. Merry, creator of the other profile, has explained, McKinley understood that soon 19th-century National economy was producing more than the nation could take. Exports were important, lowering additional countries ‘ taxes promoted exporting. ( Ag exporters are making similar arguments right now. )
Merry’s text, President McKinley: Architect of the American Century, is also worth reading. I’d suggest it even if he weren’t a long-time friend and colleague.
Lost in the controversy over the similarities, or lack of analogies, between the two leaders ‘ views of taxes is another, very different possible perpendicular. Under McKinley, the US acquired Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines.
Trump has, to the amazement of much of the earth, set his sights on Canada, Greenland, the Gaza strip and the Panama Canal.
This opposite, too, may be vague, and not just because Trump has yet to take off any of his cherished acquisitions. McKinley agonized over snatching the Philippines from Spain after the US win in the Spanish-American War, despite his belief in expanding America’s place. He wanted Cuba, another previous Spanish town, to remain independent.
Trump’s passion for foreign real estate is remarkable in large part because the supposedly long-gone era of imperialism is now. With only periodic exceptions, the globe has accepted since the end of World War II that countries don’t take over different world’s lands.
In McKinley’s time, the age of colonization was nearing its level. The Spanish, Dutch, French and – particularly – the British had been colonizing for decades. The Germans and Italians were frantically attempting to catch up. ( My maternal grandfather immigrated to the US in 1911 to avoid being drafted into Italy’s conflict to conquer Libya. )
It was the time of the coal-powered ship, which added to the perceived needed for territories. In a renowned book, American Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan argued that water power was the key to regional security. For warships to array far from their home bases, they needed shipbuilding stations in remote places like Hawaii, Guam and the Philippines.
Very different safety issues underly Trump’s interventionist feelings. One of the reasons people want Canada and Greenland is that they control the just melted water roads in the Northwest Passage. His strategy for capturing the Panama Canal is to keep China at sea. The justification for Gaza is to solve the Middle East chaos.
Quiet protests at home and abroad have greeted Trump’s interventionist speech. His facts and logic have been challenged by reviewers. Among their assertions:
- that China doesn’t represent a significant risk to the Panama Canal,
- that taking over another people’s land isn’t important to protecting the Northwest Passage,
- that it is violent and ineffective to appoint two million Palestinians to create beach resorts.
Probably most eloquently, reviewers decry Trump’s rejection to rule out military pressure to perform these acquisitions. How, they ask, may we condemn China or Russia for annexing Taiwan if we feel justified in annexing Greenland? Does often matters. But are we returning to a universe in which resolute might be the only option?
I’ve heard two actions to this. One is to take Trump seriously but no actually. He frequently says things he doesn’t perform. His challenges frequently use negotiation strategies.
The other, more extreme reply is that, under Trump, the United States doesn’t care whether China occupies Taiwan or Russia occupies Ukraine. Some of his supporters claim that the US’s creation of a world purchase following World War II is over, and that Godspeed. Allow China and Russia have their own areas of influence. We’ll had ours.
If Trump’s dramatic reply is the right one, it will have in more ways than one brought William McKinley’s world again.
Previous longtime Wall Street Journal Asia journalist and editor , Urban Lehner , is writer professor of DTN/The Progressive Farmer.
This , content,  , previously published on , February 19 , by the latter news business and then republished by Asia Times with authority, is © Copyright 2025 DTN/The Progressive Farmer. All rights reserved. Follow , Urban Lehner , on , X @urbanize.