Trump’s Diplomatic Initiatives Have Isolated the United States

Despite claims of “making America great again,” the first year of the Trump administration has seen a significant drop in global confidence of U.S. leadership. The change is most marked among European allies, whose citizens have registered little-to-no trust in the new American president in opinion polls. Trump’s foreign policy decisions have mainly consisted of appeals to his voter base, with his proclamations on Jerusalem and his “Muslim Ban” enjoying global unpopularity.

On the diplomatic field, the Trump administration has removed the United States from its leadership role on climate change and has ceded its influence in East Asia to the Chinese by pulling out of the Transpacific Partnership (TPP). France’s Emmanuel Macron has instead emerged as the global leader on the climate, hosting a major international conference on global warming in Paris last December, with the notable absence of a U.S. delegation. Meanwhile, the European Union has benefitted from U.S. disengagement on trade, accelerating lucrative negotiations with Mexico and Latin American countries as well as signing a trade deal with Tokyo, opening Japanese markets to European agricultural products.