Donald Trump: Foreign policy savant?

As President Trump continues his trip through the Mediterranean, the response has been ... actually pretty good.

POTUS' approval in Rasmussen's daily tracking poll - which tends to oversample Republicans, yet is still likely the most accurate of the major pollsters at present due to Scott Rasmussen's insistence on tracking likely voters vs all Americans since, you know, not all Americans vote - has inched up to 46%, still within the margin of error but nonetheless above last week's low of 43%.

The dollar, too, has seen gains that could be attributable to the lack of news from the administration.

While DXY has been largely flat the last few days, the trend toward USD weakness appears to have slowed down.

Meanwhile EUR/USD is back below 1.12 and GBP/USD is below 1.3, two key psychological levels that the market has been flirting with over the last week.

The reasoning behind this is simple: Trump's better at foreign policy than domestic and probably always will be.

Whereas domestic policy is all about details, foreign lends itself better to the sorts of broad gestures the administration is fond of.

Trump's lack of experience in the field also plays to his advantage. After 50+ years of private sector experience, it's easy to see how he could develop a cognitive bias in which he overestimates his own competence and, due to ego, doubles down on wrongly held beliefs.

When it comes to foreign policy less is at stake, at least in terms of ego. While trade will likely be a non-starter due resistance domestically, the administration has a lot more leeway when it comes to foreign policy. With the pivot from the Steve Bannon's of the world to a greater reliance on advisers with legitimate government and military experience, a competent administration that lucks into a few international wins could emerge.

America's reputation throughout the world has taken a massive hit of late. Tourism is down, world opinion is down, even the desire to do business with the United States is affected by the bad PR.

A more conventional, even dare I say boring, foreign policy could change that.

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