The Trump Era Archive

U.S. President Donald Trump, in words and action, favors bilateral relations as the cornerstone of his foreign policy. Special ties to some key countries and leaders will always be important, but his approach is downplaying the value of regional systems and multilateralism, and of their institutions. As a result, it will fall short in protecting American interests in an age of redistributed power and transnational threats. In his first month in office, Trump has held bilateral meetings with the leaders of the U.K., Canada, Japan and Israel, while having one with Mexico’s president canceled. Watching his strangely aggressive handshakes and […]

The composition of a U.S. president’s national security team is always important, but it is particularly so for Donald Trump. Most recent U.S. presidents took office with some experience at policymaking and international affairs, and with ties to their party’s foreign and national security policy experts. Trump did not. This is one reason that getting his people in place is taking so long. Of the 549 senior government positions that require Senate confirmation, 14 of Trump’s nominees have been confirmed, and 20 are awaiting confirmation. No one has yet been named for the remaining 515 slots. That said, Trump did […]

One month into Donald Trump’s presidency, it’s much too early to expect a fully coherent “Trump doctrine” on foreign policy. But the clear outlines of the Trump administration’s modus operandi are emerging, and it looks unlike anything we have seen before. The new administration has put in place a two-track foreign policy approach to the principal issues on the global agenda. The two tracks are not parallel; if anything, they are perpendicular and contradictory. On one track, Trump makes vague policy pronouncements over Twitter, in speeches and at press conferences. The president often reverses course and contradicts himself. On the […]

When then-President Bill Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement in a White House ceremony in December 1993, he called it “a defining moment” for the United States and praised Mexico and Canada as “our partners in the future that we are trying to make together.” All three countries had made what then seemed like an irreversible decision to marry their economic futures. Yet today, less than a quarter-century later, those bonds are badly fraying. The new U.S. president, Donald Trump, wants to renegotiate NAFTA, which he has called “the worst trade deal in history.” Mexican President Enrique Pena […]

Upon moving into the White House, U.S. President Donald Trump could have opted for a cautious approach, carefully learning the ropes while building political alliances and public support. Instead he has taken the opposite tack, rapidly staking out ambitious, even revolutionary positions. Among these were draft executive orders to drastically reduce American involvement in the United Nations and other international organizations, and withdraw from some multinational treaties. If implemented, these policies will signal a fundamental shift in the world role the United States has played for the past 75 years. They would be revolutionary indeed. While Trump did not often […]

As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump took intransigent stands on several prominent issues, notably immigration and trade. But he also said he was “totally flexible on very, very many issues,” leaving considerable ambiguity about where he would take the United States on a range of domestic and foreign policies. He was silent, for example, on the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, for counterterrorism. He did say in November 2015 that he “would bomb the hell out of” the self-proclaimed Islamic State, but the U.S.-led coalition has done plenty of that. Since it began hitting targets in Iraq and […]

No matter whether President Donald Trump’s executive order blocking entry to the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries is called a “temporary suspension” or, as Trump himself labeled it, a “ban,” it has caused furor both inside the United States and abroad. Even putting aside the morality of the policy, its hard-to-understand inclusion of some predominantly Muslim nations but not others, and the bizarre way it was developed and rolled out, it is having a major effect on America’s global security, much of it negative. While the entry ban might be good domestic politics for Trump, it defies the time-tested […]