Half way through 2026, the world has already experienced a whirlwind of geopolitical change under the seismic foreign policy shifts enacted by US President Donald Trump with trade disruptions, wars, annexation and retreats from longstanding diplomatic commitments and international norms. The often unpredictable nature of these changes raises the question of what principles guide President Trump’s foreign.
Economic protectionism
A common theme in Trump’s political career is the reiterated principle of America First. Applied to foreign policy in the National Security Strategy (NSS) of 2025, this principle has led the US to circumvent the multilateral free-trade framework of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in favor of the unilateral imposition of double and triple-digit tariffs on historical trade partners and rivals alike, including Europe, China and Brazil. While some of these tariffs were annulled after a constitutional ruling by the US Supreme Court early this year, many tariffs remain in place especially on goods like steel and aluminium. In addition, Trump has turned the threat of tariffs into a systematic tool of geopolitical influence and diplomatic leverage, and has embraced a bilateral approach to trade, negotiating trade deals between US and individual countries, outside the bounds of the WTO and other existing agreements, which the President argues disproportionally disadvantages the US. This protectionist trade policy has been justified as means to reduce US trade deficits to other countries—above all to China, its main economic competitor—and enhance US economic security by reducing its reliance on foreign imports, and restoring US manufacturing jobs.
Unilateralism and diplomatic isolationism
In a similar isolationist vein, Trump announced US withdrawal from over 60 international organizations in January 2026, including UN bodies like the World Health Organization and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, as these were deemed ‘contrary to the interests of the United States.’ Trump has also repeatedly threatened to withdraw from the North Atlantic treaty organization (NATO), accusing its European allies for freeriding on US defence spending.
Nationalist Interventionism
But this isolationism is contradicted by staunch political interventionism, most notably illustrated in the US invasion of Venezuela and the toppling of its leader Nicolas Maduro in January 2026. This was justified by reference to the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, under which the US claims sole right to wield influence over the Western Hemisphere in its own interest—a doctrine also asserted in the 2025 NSS. This, coupled with threats of troop withdrawals from Europe, reinforces the principle of America First and the centering on US affairs and its immediate proximity over that of foreign countries and more distant regions.
Trump has threatened similar actions against other countries, such as Cuba, Mexico, and Columbia, that the President deems to act against US national interests of restricting migration and drug trafficking. Similarly, the President has since February 2026 been attacking Iran to placate his pro-Israel evangelical supporters and in alleged support of Iranian anti-regime protests. However, even this interventionism remains aligned with the principle of America First, as it rests on the subordination of international norms and laws of national sovereignty, territorial integrity and the renunciation of violence without UN authorization, to US interests.
Interventionism serving economic isolationism
Similarly, Trump made attempts to acquire Greenland, even threatening military action at the beginning of the year, arguing that the territory is essential to US national security at a time when powers like Russia, China and the US are competing for influence in the strategically important Arctic region, as climate change is uncovering new shipping routes. Moreover, Greenland has significant and largely unexploited reserves of oil, critical minerals and rare earths essential for critical technologies like advanced computing chips. Similarly, the US toppling of Maduro was little about the repressive and undemocratic nature of the regime, but about rebuilding the large Venezuelan oil industry and ensuring US revenues that Trump argues were stolen from US companies with the nationalisation of industries under Hugo Chavez. This is in line with Trump’s earlier mediation efforts in Ukraine and between India and Pakistan, which included clauses to expand US access to Ukrainian critical minerals and Pakistani oil.
In this way, the seeming contradiction between Trump’s isolationist economic policy and his military interventionism dissolves—military interventionism provides natural resources that enhance US self-sufficiency and reduces its reliance on foreign imports. This is also seen in the ongoing war in Iran. Trump commenced its war on Iran in February this year on the empirically weak grounds of Iran being on the brink of acquiring nuclear weapons. Thus, the geostrategic importance of the Gulf region for the global supply of oil and natural gas suggests that Iranian oil provided an important motive for US interventionism. This is reinforced by the fact that Trump has, by contrast to his military withdrawal from Europe, notably never voiced any intentions of withdrawing from US bases in countries like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Qatar. Thus, even Trump’s interventionist stance is guided by the principle of America First, under which decades of diplomatic practices and international law, norms and customs are made unconditionally and unilaterally subservient to US geostrategic, political and economic interests.
Conflicting principles
Even so, this does not mean that Trump’s foreign policy is entirely cohesive. Rather, the second Trump administration harbours conflicting ideological branches vying for influence over foreign policy. For example, the threats to invade Colombia and Cuba hold little value from the perspective of US economic isolationism and resource self-sufficiency. Rather, these threats reflect the MAGA branch of the administration, with figures like JD Vance, seeking to restrict Latin American migration to the US, Cuban exiles such as Marco Rubio who have long pushed for the toppling of the socialist Castro regime, and republicans seeking to use foreign policy as a domestic tool in the culture war over ethnic diversity and migration.
Similarly, the Iran War makes little sense for MAGA supporters vocally opposed to the internationalist foreign policy of past administrations as but a distraction from domestic politics. However, it does align with more traditional conservative factions of the Republican Party, with a long history of evangelical support for Israel against the Islamic Iran. By contrast, the attempts to acquire Greenland and the deterioration of transatlantic ties, with denunciations of NATO and its European members, contradicts traditional Republican positions, rather mirroring a more radical MAGA approach to foreign policy.
Thus, as long as the President continues to be torn between these diverse visions of America First, US foreign policy is likely to continue to be erratic and unpredictable.
