President Trump is abandoning a number of his key campaign promises on economic policy, adopting instead many of the centrist positions he railed against while campaigning as a populist.

President Trump has changed his positions on Syria, NATO, China, the Fed, and the Ex-Im Bank (not to mention Obamacare repeal and prosecuting Hillary Clinton), all within the past few days.

Trump will not label China a "currency manipulator," ... despite a campaign pledge that he would apply the label on his first day in office. He also said he was open to reappointing Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet L. Yellen after saying last year that the central banker should be "ashamed" of what she was doing to the country. And he embraced the Export-Import Bank, a government agency that he mocked last year and that has long been despised by conservatives who labeled it crony capitalism. Last week, he ordered airstrikes against the Syrian military, even though he promised during the campaign to keep the United States out of conflicts in the Middle East. The shift on Syria enraged some of Trump's campaign supporters who had embraced his isolationist foreign policy. Also on Wednesday, Trump praised the work of NATO, a pact between the United States and some of its closest allies that Trump once called "obsolete." "It was once obsolete; it is no longer obsolete," he said Wednesday after meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. Trump's embrace of moderate positions also suggests a waning influence among the hard-line nationalist White House advisers who helped Trump win the election, as well as the rise of other advisers — many of whom hail from New York — who have more centrist, even left-leaning views.

It doesn't matter if Trump pledged to do something on his first day in office.

It doesn't matter if he called something obsolete just two months ago.

It doesn't matter if he explicitly promised to do or not to do something.

Trump is unmoored by any political belief system. He's like an army tank that can be driven in any direction. When the driver is Steve Bannon, we sometimes applaud. But now that Jared Kushner & Co. are in the driver's seat, they are driving in the opposite direction. If Ivanka had married Chairman Mao, I believe that President Trump would be espousing the virtues of class warfare and collective farming, and pro-Trump websites would tell us what a clever plan this is to revolutionize food production in America. When you combine a lack of belief system with government by nepotism, this is what you get.

The only thing that surprises me is people who are surprised by this.

Ed Straker is the senior writer at NewsMachete.com.