Tariffs and vanity dominate Washington

From Washington to Beijing, world leaders learn that pleasing or sanctioning is the only law of American diplomacy today

The Trump Doctrine: Don’t trust America. This phrase, which echoes like a grim warning, accurately summarizes the current state of American foreign policy under Donald Trump’s second term. Far from representing a beacon of stability or democratic values, the United States has become an unpredictable actor, whose international decisions are dictated less by principles and more by personal impulses, vanities and electoral calculations.

The scene is revealing: world leaders, from Sanae Takaichi of Japan to Keir Starmer of the United Kingdom, rush to flatter Trump, offering him exaggerated praise — such as nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize — or “historic” and “unprecedented” invitations. This sycophantic behavior is not just undignified; it is symptomatic of a collapsing international order, where coherence has given way to subservience in the face of a leader whose word can mean devastating economic sanctions or, worse yet, arbitrary military interventions.

Trump’s foreign policy is deeply transactional. Speeches about freedom, human rights or multilateral cooperation that, even when hypocritical, at least offered some ideological framework for US international action, disappeared. Instead, there are only negotiations for “victories” — agreements that can be appropriated by the president as personal trophies, regardless of their actual impact on global peace or justice.

His fascination with customs tariffs — seen as magical tools to restore American economic supremacy — has generated more chaos than prosperity. Traditional allies such as Japan, the United Kingdom and even India have found themselves the target of punitive measures for trivial offenses or for simply not currying favor enough. The case of India is emblematic: after Modi refused to credit Trump for mediating between India and Pakistan, the US retaliated with 50% tariffs. Canada was punished for a provincial television advertisement. This capricious logic undermines the confidence of its own strategic partners and pushes countries like India and Vietnam into the arms of China — precisely the adversary that Washington intends to contain.

Paradoxically, Trump oscillates between a peacemaker speech and a taste for brute force. While boasting about supposed peace agreements in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, authorizing airstrikes against Iran — a red line that previous presidents have refused to cross — and mobilizing American naval power in the Caribbean with rumors of regime change intentions in Venezuela. This ambiguity is not a sign of strategy, but of instability.

Even worse is the fact that this chaotic approach is being rationalized by sectors within its own administration. Analysts such as Majda Ruge and Jeremy Shapiro have identified three “tribes” within the Republican camp: the primacists, who defend the maintenance of the US global role; the moderators, skeptical about external interventions; and the prioritizers, who want to focus exclusively on containing China. But instead of a coherent synthesis, what we see is an internal dispute disguised as foreign policy — with Trump as a mercurial arbiter, driven more by instinct than vision.

The result is a “Trump Doctrine” that, far from offering guidance to the world, serves as a warning: don’t trust America. Don’t trust promises made today and broken tomorrow. Don’t trust alliances that depend on the mood of a single man. And, above all, do not trust that the global interests of peace, cooperation and balance can prosper under a foreign policy governed by narcissism and the logic of “America First”.

Meanwhile, the world watches, perplexed and vulnerable, at the spectacle of a superpower that chose chaos as its method — and ego as its compass.

Also read: The world bows to Trump’s ego

This quiet erosion of American influence is perhaps the most lasting—and most dangerous—legacy of Trump’s second term. While its defenders celebrate immediate “victories” like media ceasefires or headline-making tariffs, the world is reconfiguring itself around a new premise: the United States is no longer a reliable partner.

Trump himself does not belong to any of these groups. As Shapiro puts it: “The president doesn’t care about any of these schools of thought. He is driven by his own personal, psychological interests.” Consequently, the three groups tried to influence public policies, aligning themselves with the president’s whims and his desire for “victories”.

Each school has had its victories and its setbacks.

Supporters of containment were enthusiastic about the idea of ​​breaking with Ukraine and seeking rapprochement with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Vance played a central role in February’s televised Oval Office confrontation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine.

They got the Trump administration to cut off all financial aid to Ukraine, forcing the Europeans to cover the financial deficit. They also supported Trump’s skepticism toward NATO and his successful demand that European countries contribute more to their own defense.

But another idea that pleased more moderates — a rapprochement with Putin’s Russia — did not come to fruition. Trump was clearly disappointed with the outcome of his summit with Putin in Alaska in August. Lately, he has been friendlier to Zelensky and tightened sanctions against Russia.

Advocates of military containment suffered other setbacks. The decision to bomb Iran caused an open split in the MAGA movement — with influential figures such as Tucker Carlson and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene condemning the move. A leaked group chat between Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and others revealed the vice president’s reluctance to agree to the decision to bomb the Houthis in Yemen. “I think we are making a mistake,” Vance wrote. “I hate having to bail out Europe again.”

The bombing of Iran was a triumph for primazists—who believe in the robust use of American power around the world. But Trump’s decision to abruptly halt that campaign disappointed some in that group, who had expected the U.S. to continue the war and push even harder for regime change in Iran.

Rubio, probably the main primate, is a key figure in defending an aggressive policy against the Maduro government in Venezuela. By aligning Venezuela policy with the president’s domestic concerns regarding drugs and immigration, Rubio can win yet another victory for the primazists. Rubio’s faction also managed to stop any presidential impulse to withdraw from NATO. The current policy—remaining in the alliance while forcing Europeans to spend much more—seems a viable compromise between moderate and primacy positions.

Prioritizers probably performed the worst among the three schools. Colby’s argument that the US should downplay the Middle East and Europe in favor of a renewed effort to contain China appears to be losing steam for now. Cuts in military aid to Ukraine certainly fit Colby’s vision. But the rumor that the War Department (as the Pentagon is now called) is working on a new national defense strategy that will prioritize the Western Hemisphere over Asia sounds like a possible rejection of the prioritizers’ worldview. Any trade deal with China that sacrificed Taiwan’s interests would also be a major blow to both primacists and prioritisers.

The three foreign policy schools presented by Ruge and Shapiro — while useful — fail to capture all the chaotic instincts and influences that shaped Trump’s second-term foreign policy.

One campaign that almost no one predicted was the early declaration of a new form of American imperialism — manifested in the president’s stated desire to annex Greenland and his repeated suggestions that Canada should become the 51st state. This was a powerful thing — even for primatists — and there is still some controversy over who put these ideas on Trump’s agenda.

Overt imperialism is being downplayed for now — although there may be covert efforts underway to advance Trump’s ambitions in Greenland. But threatening Canada and Denmark, insulting India and Brazil, imposing tariffs on all of America’s allies, and encouraging the far right in Europe could still have a long-term cost.

Trump supporters argue that complaints about these policies are liberal whining. They believe the president’s willingness to use American power and influence has ensured positive results in Gaza, improved NATO, and secured much more favorable trade terms for the US.

An alternative view is that, as Shapiro puts it, “Trump is trading short-term victories for long-term problems. He is wasting 80 years of American diplomatic capital.” This capital was accumulated, in large part, by propping up the global trading system and ensuring the security of America’s allies in Asia and Europe.

This has made countries like Japan, the United Kingdom, Canada, and many others highly dependent on the US — giving America enormous influence. But by using that influence in a surprisingly ruthless way, Trump is also sending a message to the future: Trusting America is a risk.

The almost inevitable consequence is that America’s allies will begin to protect themselves against American power. Sometimes this process is explicit. Mark Carney, the Canadian Prime Minister, has made it clear that he intends to do his utmost to diversify his country’s trade relations. Other times, the process is more discreet. Consider the new effort to develop European defense and satellite capabilities that can operate independently of the US.

Countries that are not U.S. allies — and that do not depend on an American security guarantee — have even more freedom to respond forcefully to what they see as intimidation from the Trump White House. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva reacted strongly to the Trump administration’s efforts to block the prosecution and possible arrest of former President Jair Bolsonaro, a key Trump ally. Narendra Modi, the Indian Prime Minister, reportedly refused to answer Trump’s phone calls following the dispute between India and the US.

As a result, the United States is losing influence over key actors in the global South. In a recent article for the magazine Foreign AffairsRichard Fontaine and Gibbs McKinley complain that the United States is alienating swing countries in the global system and argue that “Washington is leading the BRICS to become an anti-American bloc.”

By using American strength in new and controversial ways, Trump is demonstrating the enormous power the US still wields. But he may also be ensuring that, in the coming years, his successors will have significantly less global power at their disposal.

This is the strategic tragedy of Trumpism: in the name of a supposed “restoration” of American greatness, it is accelerating the decline of America’s moral and institutional leadership in the world. Not out of weakness, but out of arrogance. Not because of inability, but because of a deliberate choice to replace cooperation with coercion, diplomacy with ultimatums, and trust with fear.

And while Trump collects symbolic awards and applause from governments eager for his momentary benevolence, the world continues to build — slowly but surely — alternatives to an order that no longer inspires respect, only caution. The Trump doctrine, in the end, can be summarized in a single sentence, repeated in whispers by chancelleries from Tokyo to Brasilia: don’t trust America.

With information from Financial Times*