In the past three months, Trump and his administration have boasted their swift upheaval of domestic and international programs from cutting funds for climate and environmental programming to dismantling the Agency for International Development. The overturn of federal R&D programming has destabilized the U.S. as a global innovation leader and has heightened China’s chance of becoming one. Arbitrary tariffs and criticism of the WTO and IMF have left a significant impact on the U.S. dollar – an impact that, if left unaddressed, could take upwards of a decade to resolve. American isolationism, however, is not new under Trump, only intensified. The U.S. has been trending isolationist since the 2008 economic recession and through previous Democratic administrations. American citizens are similarly disinterested in the U.S. role in international politics. Other global powers, like China, are seeing the benefit of multipolarity. For a new President to reverse this trajectory, they will need to work to gain not only bipartisan support, but to re-establish the U.S. as a key global player, international humanitarian aid and investments will need renewed.
It is unlikely the West would benefit from this until a peace deal is met in Ukraine. Russia could also benefit from the effects of climate change, becoming a global leader in renewable energy and boosting its economy. Despite the country’s increased ties to North Korea, Asian countries are more welcoming of Russia than those in the West, giving Russia the potential for more strategic ties.
The Red Cell Project
The Red Cell series is published in collaboration with The National Interest. Drawing upon the legacy of the CIA’s Red Cell—established following the September 11 attacks to avoid similar analytic failures in the future—the project works to challenge assumptions, misperceptions, and groupthink with a view to encouraging alternative approaches to America’s foreign and national security policy challenges.
Is President Donald Trump’s break with the United States’ traditional internationalist stance irrevocable, or can it be reversed? The stakes are high for the United States’ standing, as well as for partnerships with U.S. allies, which have counted on America for their security and prosperity. There have been other “transformational” presidents, such as Ronald Reagan, but none questioned the U.S.-led global order, which has buttressed and extended American power for the past 80 years. In the first hundred days of his second term, Trump overseen significant reductions in domestic institutions, such as the Agency for International Development (AID), which provided 40% of global humanitarian aid and disaster relief.
The remains of AID have been folded into the State Department, which faces massive cuts itself. A draft memo on the proposed reorganization of the State Department “eliminates Africa operations and shut down[s] bureaus working on democracy, human rights and refugee issues” and will reduce personnel, including diplomatic staff, by 15%. If Congress approves, some U.S. embassies and missions in Africa and the developing world will close.
All climate change and environmental programs across the U.S. government are being slashed, “cut[ting] billions of dollars for everything from drinking water, clean energy and weather satellites to national parks, emergency management and environmental justice.” Funding for green tech and clean energy, which former President Joe Biden initiated, is set to be reduced in Trump’s proposed budget, including funding for electric vehicles (EVs), which, along with auto tariffs, ensures that in four years, China will completely dominate the world market in EVs, batteries, and solar energy.
Future U.S. economic growth, as well as the innovation that has driven it, will be damaged by Trump’s cuts to federal R&D, particularly the crown jewel of science research and innovation — the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. All three of these institutions have fired scientists and halted research projects, which are not easy to restart. A recent academic study found that the deep cuts for scientific research could cause “long-run economic damage equivalent to a major recession,” let alone end U.S. leadership in health care. Universities are a critical hub for research on a wide range of topics, from cancer to vaccines, and many elite ones, such as Harvard, are facing the possible loss of all federal funding for scientific research. The only pillar of U.S. global power that will be left will be the United States’ unrivaled military superiority, which is being given another boost in Trump’s budget proposal.
Trump is not just abolishing many domestic programs that have supported the United States’ internationalist leadership, he appears determined to retreat from much of the multilateralist framework that Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and their successors created. He has blown up the World Trade Organization (WTO) trading system; withdrawn from the World Health Organization; and cut humanitarian and development funding for United Nations (U.N.) agencies, which will endanger the world’s poor.
Trump thinks other countries, especially U.S. allies, have taken advantage of U.S. security guarantees and open markets. As Secretary of State Marco Rubio has stated, “the postwar global order is not just obsolete; it is now a weapon being used against us.” It is unclear what NATO’s role will be in four years’ time — or whether a new U.S.-Russia partnership will transform the strategic landscape. By 2029, Europe may have begun building an independent defense in the wake of watered-down U.S. commitments to defend Europe against Russia.
Accusations by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent against the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank for their “woke” lending hint that once the 180-day review of international institutions is finished, the United States might reduce its commitments or even exit from both institutions. Departure from the IMF would cause a major crisis for the dollar, whose standing has already been hit by Trump’s tariffs.
In instituting tariffs against allies and other countries at levels rivaling those of the 1930s, Trump has shown that the United States is not interested in acting as a traditional economic hegemon. According to economic historian Charles Kindleberger, economic hegemons provide “three crucial functions…[they] maintain a relatively open market where countries in distress could sell their goods…provide long-term loans to countries in trouble…[and] act as a global central bank.” Trump wants to unilaterally exact concessions from other countries based on an exaggerated sense of the power and attractiveness of the U.S. market. Economists warn that because of U.S. tariffs, countries will turn elsewhere to sell their goods, and protectionism will degrade the United States’ economic competitiveness.
The nonpartisan Tax Foundation estimates that “a 10 percent universal tariff could raise $2.2 trillion over the 2025 through 2034 budget but reduce GDP by 0.4 percent.” As a result of retaliation for U.S. tariffs, revenue and U.S. GDP are set to fall further to $1.4 trillion by 2024. A recent Peterson Institute study assesses that U.S. agriculture, mining, and manufacturing could be hardest hit because of their reliance on foreign demand for their exports.
Trump is Not Alone
Trump has been undoing the United States’ global commitments and shifting away from internationalism toward a narrower, self-interested unilateralism, but trends since the 2008 financial crisis were already tilting in this direction. U.S. global trading never recovered from the crisis, as occurred with other countries. During his first term, Trump withdrew the United States from both the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership in 2017. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama had promoted those regional trade accords to put the United States at the center of global trade, marginalizing China. Biden continued the process that Trump had started to dispense with the United States’ post-World War II commitment to fostering free trade, focusing instead on keeping China down.
The United States has also been disentangling itself from overseas conflicts. Obama campaigned against the Iraq War and refused to get the United States involved in Syria’s civil war. During his first term, Trump negotiated the U.S. departure from Afghanistan, which Biden carried out with disastrous results. U.S. polling in recent years has shown the public’s distaste for the United States being the world’s police officer. The U.N. has been declining in favor with Americans. Calls for more defense spending by European NATO members date back almost two decades. U.S. participation in global efforts to battle climate change has alternated between Republicans withdrawing from the effort and Democrats restoring U.S. engagement.
Today, the second Trump administration is dismantling the domestic foundation for U.S. internationalism in ways that cannot be easily reversed. Moreover, as shown by the exclusion of Europeans in the talks with Russia on a Ukraine peace, Trump is actively undermining allied trust in Washington, which could be exceedingly difficult for a successor to restore and take longer than the four years to achieve. It will take a decade to rebuild the State Department and longer to restore U.S. scientific leadership if the world’s talent goes elsewhere. A more moderate successor might be able to eliminate some of Trump’s worst excesses, but neither political party has shown much appetite for moving beyond primacy and adapting to a multipolarizing world in which many rising states—not just China—want to have greater say.
Project 2029?
Whether a moderate president will be elected to succeed Trump in 2028 is an open question. A Republican successor who shares Trump’s views cannot be ruled out. The Democratic Party remains divided, and even if a Democrat were elected, he or she would still face a deeply split American polity.
The world will have changed, too, becoming less reliant on America. To rebuild confidence, a Democratic president would probably have to start with a goodwill measure, such as ending or lowering tariffs and demonstrating a commitment to rules-based trade. If tariffs were lowered too much on China, it could result in a flood of cheap imports, undercutting U.S. businesses and eliciting strong political blowback. The U.S. auto industry will need protection, given the strides that will have been made by other automakers in China and probably Europe.
To show the world that the United States is recommitted to free trade will require further measures, such as helping to reboot and reform the WTO. In addition, badly hurt ties with Mexico and Canada will need to be mended with more favorable treatment in a renegotiated US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which is likely to be revised or abandoned in 2026. Re-opening the doors to skilled immigrants could increase entrepreneurship, and the United States’ image would be improved by accepting asylum-seekers suffering persecution at home. Once again becoming a generous humanitarian funder committed to fighting climate change would also show that U.S. internationalism was not dead.
A new administration will have to accept that U.S. partners might have moved on and that in adapting to the space the United States vacated, new patterns of trade and investment, as well as security alignments, will preclude their former deference to U.S. wishes. By 2028, Europe may have drawn closer to China, partnering with Beijing to fight climate change and to forge greater trade and economic cooperation. Europe could also have established a Capital Markets Union and be pouring its savings into Eurobonds and other domestic investments instead of Wall Street. More broadly, lingering doubts about the dollar as a safe haven could persist until the new president creates a plan to reduce the budget deficit and mounting debt, rather than relying on tariffs.
Peacemaking
Continuing conflict in Ukraine, the Middle East, or elsewhere could present an opportunity for the new president to demonstrate the United States’ still-critical role in fostering peace. Even if Trump succeeds in brokering a ceasefire in Ukraine, he probably will not be able to achieve a long-term armistice or bring Russia and Europe together to forge a new, mutually acceptable security arrangement. A renewal of Russo-EU economic ties would require a peaceful and stable Ukraine, along with a European decision not to remain isolated from Russia and vice-versa. A new president could restore trust by showing strategic empathy for other countries’ interests. Finally, a series of global arms control measures that lower the risk of nuclear war and bolster strategic stability with agreements on the uses of cyber and artificial intelligence would be beneficial for the U.S. position. But U.S. political divisions might obstruct such diplomacy.
Challenges to Reversing Course
Budgetary limitations, as well as lost talent and experience, will most likely restrict the degree to which a new president can quickly rebuild the State Department and AID and restore federal funding for NIH, NOAA, and education, as well as back U.S. green tech industries. This would be particularly the case if he or she faces a divided Congress and strong opposition from Trumpist Republicans. If the new president can overcome political opposition and find a way to catch up on green tech and renew cooperation on assistance for the poor and climate change, U.S. standing and economic prospects will improve.
One U.S. think tank China expert believes the risk of a conflict with China is rising because “Trump’s early second-term actions have strengthened Beijing’s conviction that the United States is accelerating its own decline, bringing a new era of parity ever closer.” Americans’ resentment against China could increase if China is seen as coming out of the tariff war less damaged than the U.S. economy, which many economists predict will be the case. An open Sino-U.S. conflict to settle differences, such as Taiwan, cannot be ruled out.
But even if the worst does not happen, Trump’s destruction of the very foundations of U.S. internationalism will probably have pushed the United States and the world onto a new course. Who can fully trust the United States, even if Trump’s successor rebuilds Washington’s image? After Trump’s less-destructive first term, U.S. allies saw Trump as a one-time aberration. Today, that is no longer possible: U.S. allies and partners must reckon with a deep-seated, isolationist strain in the U.S. polity that is unlikely to go away.
There’s a common American saying that however much you wish it, “you can’t go home again.” Sadly, that’s likely to be the case for the United States—indeed the world—after Trump’s second term.
The Red Cell thanks the Swedish Defence University for its support in the research and writing of this article.
In the past three months, Trump and his administration have boasted their swift upheaval of domestic and international programs from cutting funds for climate and environmental programming to dismantling the Agency for International Development. The overturn of federal R&D programming has destabilized the U.S. as a global innovation leader and has heightened China’s chance of becoming one. Arbitrary tariffs and criticism of the WTO and IMF have left a significant impact on the U.S. dollar – an impact that, if left unaddressed, could take upwards of a decade to resolve. American isolationism, however, is not new under Trump, only intensified. The U.S. has been trending isolationist since the 2008 economic recession and through previous Democratic administrations. American citizens are similarly disinterested in the U.S. role in international politics. Other global powers, like China, are seeing the benefit of multipolarity. For a new President to reverse this trajectory, they will need to work to gain not only bipartisan support, but to re-establish the U.S. as a key global player, international humanitarian aid and investments will need renewed.
It is unlikely the West would benefit from this until a peace deal is met in Ukraine. Russia could also benefit from the effects of climate change, becoming a global leader in renewable energy and boosting its economy. Despite the country’s increased ties to North Korea, Asian countries are more welcoming of Russia than those in the West, giving Russia the potential for more strategic ties.
The Red Cell Project
The Red Cell series is published in collaboration with The National Interest. Drawing upon the legacy of the CIA’s Red Cell—established following the September 11 attacks to avoid similar analytic failures in the future—the project works to challenge assumptions, misperceptions, and groupthink with a view to encouraging alternative approaches to America’s foreign and national security policy challenges.
Is President Donald Trump’s break with the United States’ traditional internationalist stance irrevocable, or can it be reversed? The stakes are high for the United States’ standing, as well as for partnerships with U.S. allies, which have counted on America for their security and prosperity. There have been other “transformational” presidents, such as Ronald Reagan, but none questioned the U.S.-led global order, which has buttressed and extended American power for the past 80 years. In the first hundred days of his second term, Trump overseen significant reductions in domestic institutions, such as the Agency for International Development (AID), which provided 40% of global humanitarian aid and disaster relief.
The remains of AID have been folded into the State Department, which faces massive cuts itself. A draft memo on the proposed reorganization of the State Department “eliminates Africa operations and shut down[s] bureaus working on democracy, human rights and refugee issues” and will reduce personnel, including diplomatic staff, by 15%. If Congress approves, some U.S. embassies and missions in Africa and the developing world will close.
All climate change and environmental programs across the U.S. government are being slashed, “cut[ting] billions of dollars for everything from drinking water, clean energy and weather satellites to national parks, emergency management and environmental justice.” Funding for green tech and clean energy, which former President Joe Biden initiated, is set to be reduced in Trump’s proposed budget, including funding for electric vehicles (EVs), which, along with auto tariffs, ensures that in four years, China will completely dominate the world market in EVs, batteries, and solar energy.
Future U.S. economic growth, as well as the innovation that has driven it, will be damaged by Trump’s cuts to federal R&D, particularly the crown jewel of science research and innovation — the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. All three of these institutions have fired scientists and halted research projects, which are not easy to restart. A recent academic study found that the deep cuts for scientific research could cause “long-run economic damage equivalent to a major recession,” let alone end U.S. leadership in health care. Universities are a critical hub for research on a wide range of topics, from cancer to vaccines, and many elite ones, such as Harvard, are facing the possible loss of all federal funding for scientific research. The only pillar of U.S. global power that will be left will be the United States’ unrivaled military superiority, which is being given another boost in Trump’s budget proposal.
Trump is not just abolishing many domestic programs that have supported the United States’ internationalist leadership, he appears determined to retreat from much of the multilateralist framework that Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and their successors created. He has blown up the World Trade Organization (WTO) trading system; withdrawn from the World Health Organization; and cut humanitarian and development funding for United Nations (U.N.) agencies, which will endanger the world’s poor.
Trump thinks other countries, especially U.S. allies, have taken advantage of U.S. security guarantees and open markets. As Secretary of State Marco Rubio has stated, “the postwar global order is not just obsolete; it is now a weapon being used against us.” It is unclear what NATO’s role will be in four years’ time — or whether a new U.S.-Russia partnership will transform the strategic landscape. By 2029, Europe may have begun building an independent defense in the wake of watered-down U.S. commitments to defend Europe against Russia.
Accusations by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent against the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank for their “woke” lending hint that once the 180-day review of international institutions is finished, the United States might reduce its commitments or even exit from both institutions. Departure from the IMF would cause a major crisis for the dollar, whose standing has already been hit by Trump’s tariffs.
In instituting tariffs against allies and other countries at levels rivaling those of the 1930s, Trump has shown that the United States is not interested in acting as a traditional economic hegemon. According to economic historian Charles Kindleberger, economic hegemons provide “three crucial functions…[they] maintain a relatively open market where countries in distress could sell their goods…provide long-term loans to countries in trouble…[and] act as a global central bank.” Trump wants to unilaterally exact concessions from other countries based on an exaggerated sense of the power and attractiveness of the U.S. market. Economists warn that because of U.S. tariffs, countries will turn elsewhere to sell their goods, and protectionism will degrade the United States’ economic competitiveness.
The nonpartisan Tax Foundation estimates that “a 10 percent universal tariff could raise $2.2 trillion over the 2025 through 2034 budget but reduce GDP by 0.4 percent.” As a result of retaliation for U.S. tariffs, revenue and U.S. GDP are set to fall further to $1.4 trillion by 2024. A recent Peterson Institute study assesses that U.S. agriculture, mining, and manufacturing could be hardest hit because of their reliance on foreign demand for their exports.
Trump is Not Alone
Trump has been undoing the United States’ global commitments and shifting away from internationalism toward a narrower, self-interested unilateralism, but trends since the 2008 financial crisis were already tilting in this direction. U.S. global trading never recovered from the crisis, as occurred with other countries. During his first term, Trump withdrew the United States from both the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership in 2017. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama had promoted those regional trade accords to put the United States at the center of global trade, marginalizing China. Biden continued the process that Trump had started to dispense with the United States’ post-World War II commitment to fostering free trade, focusing instead on keeping China down.
The United States has also been disentangling itself from overseas conflicts. Obama campaigned against the Iraq War and refused to get the United States involved in Syria’s civil war. During his first term, Trump negotiated the U.S. departure from Afghanistan, which Biden carried out with disastrous results. U.S. polling in recent years has shown the public’s distaste for the United States being the world’s police officer. The U.N. has been declining in favor with Americans. Calls for more defense spending by European NATO members date back almost two decades. U.S. participation in global efforts to battle climate change has alternated between Republicans withdrawing from the effort and Democrats restoring U.S. engagement.
Today, the second Trump administration is dismantling the domestic foundation for U.S. internationalism in ways that cannot be easily reversed. Moreover, as shown by the exclusion of Europeans in the talks with Russia on a Ukraine peace, Trump is actively undermining allied trust in Washington, which could be exceedingly difficult for a successor to restore and take longer than the four years to achieve. It will take a decade to rebuild the State Department and longer to restore U.S. scientific leadership if the world’s talent goes elsewhere. A more moderate successor might be able to eliminate some of Trump’s worst excesses, but neither political party has shown much appetite for moving beyond primacy and adapting to a multipolarizing world in which many rising states—not just China—want to have greater say.
Project 2029?
Whether a moderate president will be elected to succeed Trump in 2028 is an open question. A Republican successor who shares Trump’s views cannot be ruled out. The Democratic Party remains divided, and even if a Democrat were elected, he or she would still face a deeply split American polity.
The world will have changed, too, becoming less reliant on America. To rebuild confidence, a Democratic president would probably have to start with a goodwill measure, such as ending or lowering tariffs and demonstrating a commitment to rules-based trade. If tariffs were lowered too much on China, it could result in a flood of cheap imports, undercutting U.S. businesses and eliciting strong political blowback. The U.S. auto industry will need protection, given the strides that will have been made by other automakers in China and probably Europe.
To show the world that the United States is recommitted to free trade will require further measures, such as helping to reboot and reform the WTO. In addition, badly hurt ties with Mexico and Canada will need to be mended with more favorable treatment in a renegotiated US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which is likely to be revised or abandoned in 2026. Re-opening the doors to skilled immigrants could increase entrepreneurship, and the United States’ image would be improved by accepting asylum-seekers suffering persecution at home. Once again becoming a generous humanitarian funder committed to fighting climate change would also show that U.S. internationalism was not dead.
A new administration will have to accept that U.S. partners might have moved on and that in adapting to the space the United States vacated, new patterns of trade and investment, as well as security alignments, will preclude their former deference to U.S. wishes. By 2028, Europe may have drawn closer to China, partnering with Beijing to fight climate change and to forge greater trade and economic cooperation. Europe could also have established a Capital Markets Union and be pouring its savings into Eurobonds and other domestic investments instead of Wall Street. More broadly, lingering doubts about the dollar as a safe haven could persist until the new president creates a plan to reduce the budget deficit and mounting debt, rather than relying on tariffs.
Peacemaking
Continuing conflict in Ukraine, the Middle East, or elsewhere could present an opportunity for the new president to demonstrate the United States’ still-critical role in fostering peace. Even if Trump succeeds in brokering a ceasefire in Ukraine, he probably will not be able to achieve a long-term armistice or bring Russia and Europe together to forge a new, mutually acceptable security arrangement. A renewal of Russo-EU economic ties would require a peaceful and stable Ukraine, along with a European decision not to remain isolated from Russia and vice-versa. A new president could restore trust by showing strategic empathy for other countries’ interests. Finally, a series of global arms control measures that lower the risk of nuclear war and bolster strategic stability with agreements on the uses of cyber and artificial intelligence would be beneficial for the U.S. position. But U.S. political divisions might obstruct such diplomacy.
Challenges to Reversing Course
Budgetary limitations, as well as lost talent and experience, will most likely restrict the degree to which a new president can quickly rebuild the State Department and AID and restore federal funding for NIH, NOAA, and education, as well as back U.S. green tech industries. This would be particularly the case if he or she faces a divided Congress and strong opposition from Trumpist Republicans. If the new president can overcome political opposition and find a way to catch up on green tech and renew cooperation on assistance for the poor and climate change, U.S. standing and economic prospects will improve.
One U.S. think tank China expert believes the risk of a conflict with China is rising because “Trump’s early second-term actions have strengthened Beijing’s conviction that the United States is accelerating its own decline, bringing a new era of parity ever closer.” Americans’ resentment against China could increase if China is seen as coming out of the tariff war less damaged than the U.S. economy, which many economists predict will be the case. An open Sino-U.S. conflict to settle differences, such as Taiwan, cannot be ruled out.
But even if the worst does not happen, Trump’s destruction of the very foundations of U.S. internationalism will probably have pushed the United States and the world onto a new course. Who can fully trust the United States, even if Trump’s successor rebuilds Washington’s image? After Trump’s less-destructive first term, U.S. allies saw Trump as a one-time aberration. Today, that is no longer possible: U.S. allies and partners must reckon with a deep-seated, isolationist strain in the U.S. polity that is unlikely to go away.
There’s a common American saying that however much you wish it, “you can’t go home again.” Sadly, that’s likely to be the case for the United States—indeed the world—after Trump’s second term.
The Red Cell thanks the Swedish Defence University for its support in the research and writing of this article.
