Donald Trump never tires of complaining that all our trading partners are treating us unfairly. As many have pointed out, the complaint that other countries have trade surpluses with us and therefore are taking advantage of the US makes as much sense as complaining that our grocery story has a trade surplus with us.

It is especially absurd in the case of Canada, a neighbor and longstanding ally. The reason that Canada has a trade surplus with the US is that it sells us oil. Without its oil sales it would be running a trade deficit. So, we’re supposed to be angry at Canada because it is selling us oil?

But wait, the story gets even better. Guess who wanted Canada to sell us oil? Remember the Keystone Pipeline? That was about bringing oil from Canada to the United States. Back in his first term, Donald Trump was a big proponent of the Keystone Pipeline. In other words, Donald Trump was pushing hard to increase our trade deficit with Canada. But hey, that was years ago.

Anyhow, Trump’s views on trade in general seem to make as much sense as his anger at Canada for selling us oil. But there is a bit of method in his madness.

Trump has convinced at least some of his voters that countries running trade surpluses are doing bad things to the United States. This is the ostensible rationale for his taxes on imports (tariffs).

But it looks as though some countries may be able to earn themselves exemptions from tariffs. Vietnam seems to be in line for getting some special treatment. The reason is that they are negotiating with Elon Musk to give a big contract to his Starlink company. Trump wants us to think that Vietnam is a real bad actor and treating us very unfairly, but if they give a big contract to Trump’s largest campaign contributor, then all is fine.

That pretty much says it all about Trump’s trade policy and his presidency more generally. It is a policy of wholesale and open corruption. I suppose some folks may think that’s great, but it is hard to understand how, unless you own a lot of stock in Elon Musk’s companies.