5. Romney can keep free market diplomacy on the table
Romney has expressed a belief in free markets, the wealth that they build and how free markets lead to a more peaceful world. It’s always bad idea to shoot your customers.
Donald Trump’s protectionist trade policies, including tariffs and punishment for American businesses that outsource labor, are likely to decrease supply and increase consumer prices while doing little to increase employment and wages. Romney could well force Trump to realize how intertwined international trade and foreign policy have become.
Trump wants to renegotiate trade deals. Romney can help by discouraging trade policies that harm foreign relations.
Romney is also a far better communicator than Trump, whose freewheeling monologues that flit from one subject to another can leave you wondering what he just said. Trump needs an intermediary like Romney just to keep him from infuriating our allies and emboldening our enemies.
As foreign leaders are skittish about Trump, it would behoove him to assuage their anxieties by appointing a Secretary of State who is successful in his own right, confident, and temperate. If Romney is really good, he might even be able to persuade the president to give up Twitter.
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