During his term as President of the United States, Donald Trump enacted a series of policies and Executive Orders to promote his ‘America First’ agenda. At the beginning of his Presidency in 2017, Trump removed the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade agreement between several Asian countries, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Peru, and Chile. In doing so, Trump argued that the United States would be free to control the international trade market. The United States’ exit from this trade agreement was the first step in Trump’s plan to transform American foreign policy, yet it came at the cost of isolating several of our global allies. Throughout his Presidency, the Trump Administration partially accomplished its foreign policy goal of independence at the expense of several relationships with American allies while also angering American foes.
In 2019, President Trump announced his intent to withdraw from the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. “The Paris accord would have been shutting down American producers with excessive regulatory restrictions like you would not believe…what we won’t do is punish the American people… it’s called America First.” This announcement outraged many in the U.S. and the international community. As per Reuters, the move was counterintuitive on several fronts, as it both set us back in the fight against climate change and effectively lowered America’s standing as a global leader by stepping away from inevitable economic advancements to make the world more environmentally conscious. Similarly, President Trump pulled the United States out of the Iran Nuclear Deal in 2018. The president promised a better nuclear deal for America, yet such a deal was never written.
Several of the Administration’s smaller ‘America First’ policy initiatives went largely unnoticed. For example, the United States renegotiated NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) to gain more regional control and renamed it the U.S. – Canada – Mexico Trade Agreement. This move ultimately did very little for the American economy but did impose more stringent labor regulations in Mexico. Over the past four years, the relationship between the United States and the European Union seemingly collapsed after Trump labeled the EU as a trade “enemy.”
In May of 2020, roughly three months after Coronavirus reached the United States, Donald Trump sought to blame the World Health Organization (WHO) for the United States’ shortcomings regarding the virus. The president cut funding to the WHO and pulled the United States out of the organization. This, coupled with conflict in the United Nations, proved that America First was really becoming ‘America Alone,’ a term coined by Peter Nicholas and Tom McTague, writers for the Atlantic.
So, where does the United States stand today, under a new administration? On President Biden’s first day in office, he issued a storm of Executive Orders, two of which included reinstating the United States in the Paris Climate Agreement and rejoining the World Health Organization (WHO). In his first week as president, Biden made phone calls to several of America’s allies to usher in a new era of global cooperation and make America Alone an issue of the past.
