America’s global influence has dwindled under Donald Trump
A presidential tour of Asia cannot hide the fact that America has turned inward, hurting itself and the world
A YEAR ago this week Donald Trump was elected president. Many people predicted that American foreign policy would take a disastrous turn. Mr Trump had suggested that he would scrap trade deals, ditch allies, put a figurative bomb under the rules-based global order and drop literal ones willy-nilly. NATO was “obsolete”, he said; NAFTA was “the worst trade deal maybe ever”; and America was far too nice to foreigners. “In the old days when you won a war, you won a war. You kept the country,” he opined, adding later that he would “bomb the shit out of” Islamic State (IS) and “take the oil”.
This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline “Endangered”
Leaders
November 11th 2017
From the November 11th 2017 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
Explore the edition
The plan to protect America by shooting down missiles mid-air
It’s not as outlandish as it sounds
The man with a plan for Vietnam
A Communist Party hard man has to rescue Asia’s great success story
MAGA’s assault on science is an act of grievous self-harm
America will pay the price most of all
How Poland can keep its place at the heart of Europe
If it turns inward, the country and continent will lose out
The best part of the UK-EU deal is a system for doing more deals
Sir Keir Starmer’s “reset” is still a hard Brexit. It will need softening
The Senate should vote down Donald Trump’s reckless tax cuts
If it does not, a collision with the bond markets awaits