It’s time to reread La Fontaine’s famous fable, “The Wolf and the Lamb.”

Let me summarize it for you:

A wolf spots a juicy lamb and decides to eat it. Instead of devouring it right away, he feels compelled to justify his violence to his future victim. A dialogue of the deaf ensues, with the lamb defending itself against any suggestion that it is the cause of the wolf’s problems. Alas, the wolf has already made up his mind and, after a tragic verbal duel, he goes off to devour the lamb in a corner. End of story.

It dates back to 1668, 357 years ago to be precise. But it hasn’t aged a bit.

Donald (the second most famous Donald in the world) has a problem: he is the head of a state that spends far more than it earns. Every year for the past fifty years. 

Of course, he’s not the only one: France, Italy, and Japan also have debt ratios exceeding 100% of GDP and amounting to billions.

Donald’s problem is that, in the past, the US didn’t care: they had the dollar, and the whole world traded in dollars. As they used to say, “It’s our currency, but it’s your problem.” (John Connally, Secretary of the Treasury under President Nixon – fifty years ago).

They even went to war with countries when they wanted to stop being paid in dollars (for example, the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 1999).

But that was then. Today, Donald senses that the tide is turning: the BRICS countries, which represent almost 50% of the world’s population, no longer want to use the dollar for everything, nor do they want to keep buying up US debt.

Donald knows full well that countries cannot live indefinitely beyond their means, even if they are the most powerful in the world. If the US were Argentina or Lebanon, it would have defaulted (on its payments) long ago.

Donald has therefore decided to reduce the US federal debt. To do this, he has two levers (like any good family man, for that matter): reducing spending and increasing revenue.

Cutting spending hurts. So, yes, by eliminating USAID, he reduced spending a little, but only slightly. (He mainly indulged himself, as some US officials at USAID forgot that their donors were all Americans, not just Democrats. They should have been more cautious in their criticism of a candidate in the big election. They now have four years to think about it.)

Cutting spending hurts and is unpopular with the electorate.

On the other hand, increasing revenue is a piece of cake, especially if it’s not Americans who are paying.

And here we have our Donald – La Fontaine’s wolf: he has decided to make others pay for his internal management problems, even though they have nothing to do with them. But he doesn’t care, just like the wolf. His exchanges with other heads of state are just for show, staged for his own American electorate. The script is already written: you’re going to pay.

The most incredible thing is the public humiliation of Ms. Von der Leyen: she doesn’t even seem to realize that she is the lamb in the fable and appears to be suffering from “Stockholm syndrome”: she wasn’t eaten, only fleeced, so she’s happy. She might even say “thank you.”

And so Donald Trump, hammering the final nail into the WTO’s coffin, has managed to reduce his debt by accusing the evil third countries of ruining him.

I say, hats off to the artist!