What You Should Know
President Trump will leave U.S. foreign policy in far better shape than he found it. By putting America’s interests first, Trump during his four years in the White House steered the U.S., and the world, toward a more secure, enlightened and free 21st century.
This meant tackling huge obstacles, even before the coronavirus pandemic arrived from China in 2020. When Trump took office in 2017, U.S. foreign policy was a mess of compounding fiascos. President Obama had spent the previous eight years apologizing for America and downsizing it as a world power. In this scheme, America operated less as the leader of the free world than as a large cog in a global collective. It was a foreign policy of appeasement and retreat, debilitating to America and emboldening to our enemies.
Trump changed that trajectory. He stood up unapologetically for America and began rebuilding a hollowed-out American military. He forced a long overdue and urgently needed recognition of the rapidly rising dangers posed by China. He pulled out of deals damaging to America and dangerous to our allies, and sought arrangements better aligned with reality and American interests, notably the Abraham Accords in the Middle East.
When Joe Biden takes office, he plans to revert to many of the policies and personnel of the Obama administration, in which he served as vice president. The troubling prospect is a swing from a U.S. presidency that put America first, to a presidency likely to put America last—or near enough.
