“I love the Saudis. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million. Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”— Donald J. Trump, 2015

Not much has changed since Trump uttered those words — except for the fact that he is now president of the United States. He is still a businessman at heart. He still sees selling something to someone else as the only thing that counts. He has never been able to make the leap from what is good for his business — sales — to what is good for the nation: access to cheap, foreign imports.

It was bad enough when Trump’s ass-backwards views on trade — selling goods to foreigners is the only thing that counts — precipitated the imposition of tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from U.S. allies and a tit-for-tat trade war with China.

Now those misperceptions are starting to influence foreign policy, international relationships and even national security.

Trump’s response to the death of Washington Post opinion contributor Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi resident of the United States, is a case in point.

Khashoggi walked into the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, never to be seen again. The official Saudi explanation for his disappearance and death has been evolving for three weeks. All evidence points to his torture, murder and dismemberment at the hands of Saudi agents, most likely under the direction of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Pressed by Congress to sanction the Saudi regime for the gruesome murder, Trump’s first reaction was: “We don’t want to do anything to interfere with their $110 billion in arms purchases from the U.S.”

Let’s leave aside Trump’s exaggerated claims of $110 billion of arms purchases, which were memorandums of intent, not signed deals, and the ever-expanding number of jobs such a purchase would support: from 40,000 to 1 million, and increasing day by day. “Arms should never been seen as a jobs program,” as Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul told Fox News Sunday’s Chris Wallace.

Even more disturbing is the president’s willingness to abdicate “America’s historic role as a global beacon of morality and human rights,” according to the Washington Post’s Phil Rucker and Josh Dawsey. “Instead, Trump is pursuing a foreign policy shaped by commercial self-interest.”

His message to authoritarians around the world, be it Russia’s Vladimir Putin or North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, is that you can do as you please in terms of human rights. As long as you buy goods from the U.S., it’s OK by him.

Even South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, a staunch supporter of the president, was critical of Trump’s response to Khashoggi’s murder, saying the U.S. should not allow strategic alliances to mute the nation’s “moral voice.” “It’s equally important to understand that our values are more important than money and jobs,” Graham said.

It’s not clear that message is resonating with the president.

Trump, the businessman, thinks solely in terms of sales and profits. Selling an entire floor in Trump World Tower to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 2001 was a lucrative transaction.

Trump, in effect, runs a trade surplus in condos with the Saudis.

For USA Inc., those condo sales represent an investment inflow. Capital inflows are the mirror image of the trade, or current account, deficit. A plus for Trump Inc., a minus — at least in balance-of-trade accounting terms — for USA Inc.

Trump talks out of both sides of his mouth on trade. On the one hand, he proclaims that the U.S. is open for business, touting tax cuts and deregulation as the driver of renewed foreign investment in the U.S. On the other hand, he declares that the U.S. is losing money — getting ripped off — on trade, citing 2017’s $807 billion trade deficit in goods (services don’t count in Trump world). The dollars used to purchase goods and services from abroad return to the U.S. as foreign direct investment or asset purchases.

Now Trump is using trade as an excuse to prioritize his personal and commercial relationships with MBS and the Saudis over the national interest, jeopardizing America’s moral standing in the world. He refuses to exercise his considerable leverage over the kingdom, including its dependence on U.S. defense contractors for arms, replacement parts and repair, to pressure the Saudis to come clean.

Just this year, the U.S. surpassed Russia and Saudi Arabia to become the world’s largest oil producer. The U.S depends on Saudi Arabia for 9% of its petroleum imports compared with 40% from Canada.

Yes, Saudi Arabia acts as a counterweight to Iran in the Middle East and has developed a strange-bedfellow relationship with Israel. But that doesn’t mean the U.S. should give Saudi Arabia carte blanche to crack down on dissent by murdering journalists.

So far, no amount of pressure from Congress and European allies has managed to nudge Trump from his laissez-faire approach to Khashoggi’s murder. So here’s a new tact that might work. Someone might want to point out to Trump that the U.S. runs a trade deficit in goods — yes, a deficit! — with Saudi Arabia.

Nothing is more likely to change the president’s foreign policy towards a country than the realization that said country is ripping the U.S. off on trade.