Daniel W. Drezner
The only thing uncontroversial about Donald Trump is how he won his second term. Despite polls showing a statistical dead heat and fears of a long, drawn-out wait for election results, Trump was declared the winner early last Wednesday morning. Unlike in 2016, he won the popular vote as well as the Electoral College, improving his margins in almost every demographic. Republicans won a strong Senate majority of 53 seats, and they look likely to maintain control of the House of Representatives. To the rest of the world, the picture should be clear: Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement will define U.S. foreign policy for the next four years.
Any close observer of Trump’s first term should be familiar with his foreign policy preferences as well as his foreign policy process. However, there are likely to be three significant differences between Trump’s first- and second-term foreign policies. First, Trump will come into office with a more homogeneous national security team than he had in 2017. Second, the state of the world in 2025 is rather different than it was in 2017. And third, foreign actors will have a much better read of Donald Trump.
Trump will navigate world politics with greater confidence this time around. Whether he will have any better luck bending the world to his “America first” brand is another question entirely. What is certain, however, is that the era of American exceptionalism has ended. Under Trump, U.S. foreign policy will cease promoting long-standing American ideals. That, combined with an expected surge of corrupt foreign policy practices, will leave the United States looking like a garden-variety great power.
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