Trump’s main foreign policy issues will be China, migration and energy, and his actions will be structured around them.
Trump’s main foreign policy issues will be China, migration and energy, and his actions will be structured around them.
By Sergio Rodriguez Gelfenstein
Two weeks before Donald Trump is going to be sworn in as President of the United States, I am going to venture to make some observations about the prospects of the new government, first regarding its foreign policy, especially after his arrogant, confrontational statements regarding Mexico, Panama, Venezuela and Denmark (for Greenland).
In this regard, it can be concluded that impertinence is a personality trait of the new US president, something he combines with an aggressive business outlook as a way of achieving his goals. Before assuming his first government, after having won the elections in 2016 and when he was proceeding to appoint the members of the administration, his best friend Steven Witkoff recommended that he should not incorporate John Bolton into the cabinet. He replied that it was a late recommendation because he had already done so.
Now, Trump believes that when he built his first government, he had to accept many impositions because he was not a politician, he had no experience, he did not control the Republican Party, nor its senators and representatives, nor the media or social networks.
That situation has changed now. Eight years later, Trump appreciates that, although Bolton did great harm to his first administration, he had also helped him because, despite being so hated by everyone, he did the dirty work. After that, Trump would come to discuss a situation in which a space had been created for negotiation and even for concessions, with which, many times, he was able to capitalize on “the settlement” of the controversies. It was the old game of “bad cop, good cop” applied to politics.
This narrative largely reflects Trump’s foreign policy approach. Ultimately, his main objective is to stop China, and he is going to devote most of his energies to that. For example, the pressures on Panama are not aimed at seizing the Canal, but at getting China out of that country. Now, he has put the issue on the negotiating table, and when he asks the Panamanian government to take action against China, he will appear to be giving in on his objective of seizing the Canal. That is, he will “give in” on that objective in exchange for Panama expelling China from its territory. The same is true of Greenland: In the end, he will finish controlling the territory without needing to seize it, which will also be considered a concession on his part.
Considering all of Trump’s appointments of loyal figures outside the establishment (see my previous article “What will Marco Rubio do?”), I would like to reiterate that the most important question remains what will be the role of the State Department in the execution of US foreign policy.
The answer is that it will devote himself to exerting pressure to take away China’s space in the world and especially in Latin America and the Caribbean, where Rubio has strong relations with governments, parties and leaders of the right and the extreme right, some of whom are also considered friends of China. So this will also be a disputed scenario, since – I would like to insist – China will be the number one target of the United States’ foreign policy and not precisely to cooperate, but rather to hinder bilateral ties and prevent Beijing – although China has not proposed it – from challenging Washington for global hegemony.
If this is so, it would be worth asking why Trump appointed Rubio to the post of Secretary of State, knowing that he does not trust him because he is a “hawk” loyal to the neoconservatives. And the answer is that even though the next president – unlike his first administration – controls the Republican Party today, there are still some senators who maintain autonomy and who could confront him, as seen in the fact that Trump will most likely have to withdraw from the appointment of Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense due to the resistance he faces among senators of his own party. Trump needs them, above all to guarantee the appointment of some figures in his cabinet, particularly Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat, who is not wanted in office by her former colleagues because she knows many of their internal secrets.
On the other hand, it is a fact that Trump will resume the “trade war” against China by establishing new trade tariffs and raising others so that Beijing is forced to devalue its currency, making its exports more expensive and affecting its trade. Latin American economies that import a lot from China will be affected by this measure.
Likewise, as an analytical tool, it should not be overlooked that Trump has a personality characterized by rash decisions and the generation of uncertainty as instruments of coercion. This leads to governments and foreign ministries being limited in their ability to foresee events. Trump does not act from a defined ideology. He is only driven by the desire to achieve profits for the United States, particularly for corporations and the rich.
The establishment is his enemy because it has bet on the speculative and service economy and Trump intends to return to a situation in which the United States bases its economy on production. This explains some of Trump’s appointments aimed at confronting the establishment, in particular Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence and Hash Patel as director of the FBI.
Trump intends to extend his control of the State in the future through Vice President JD Vance, who is his “dauphin.” But Vance does have a defined ideology that is far away from traditional canons. Trump’s emergence in politics and his search for an extension of his influence over time is an expression of the great contradictions that the American political system is suffering, as it is moving away from the traditional Democrat-Republican or left-right dichotomy.
Both parties are experiencing an identity crisis. Among the Democrats, there is an Atlanticist neo-conservative current that is opposed to the old party that promoted the welfare state, that does not want war and that believes in the need to increase social investment, all of which reflects an unresolved dispute. However, Bernie Sanders was removed from the path in a bad and illegal manner, making it clear that the right wing of that party (which in the United States is considered “left”) is in charge.
For its part, the Republican Party, an old conservative and reactionary organization, is also torn between the traditionalist current and the anti-establishment Trumpism that proposes a new way of doing politics. In the first instance, Trump plans to intervene in the Republican Party so that the new Vance generation controls it in order to “make America great again.” If this is not possible, it is likely that Trump will aim to create his own political organization attracting sectors from both sides of the country’s traditional two-party system.
Vance has a consistent line of thought based on white supremacy and the fight against the establishment, which he considers retrograde and immobilizing. To that extent, he assumes himself as a promoter of a dominant class linked to these principles and a staunch defense of traditional religion. Curiously, he has a great identification with the American working class, but – of course – not in Marxist terms but within the old-fashioned capitalist conception. He rejects large corporations and monopolies, which he considers responsible for destroying capitalism, since their practice leads to destroying the basis of the capitalist economy, which is competition. All this generates a sea of contradictions that make it difficult to understand what is happening.
The truth is that this complex situation was evident in the election results, the extreme right as a whole covered the electoral spectrum by being present in both the Democratic and Republican camps. Therefore, beyond the fact that Trump represented the Republican Party, the truth is that a third force is emerging. Perhaps the clearest expressions are the appointment of Gabbard , a Democrat by training and conviction, and Robert Kennedy Jr., a Democrat of pure stock and pedigree, as Secretary of Health and Human Services. In this dimension, the support of blacks and Latinos for Trump, who is openly racist and supremacist, must also be understood. It has become clear that traditional discourses are part of the past.
The only thing that matters now is the economy and the solution to the economic problems of the majority. The traditional distinction between those with a university education and those without is no longer valid in American society. Precisely, segregation based on criteria such as this is what has thrown important excluded sectors of society into Trump’s hands.
In short, Trump is going to orient his government basically towards solving domestic policy problems. As for the foreign policy, the focus of concern will be on China. He will try to solve the Ukraine problem because he is not willing to continue bleeding the US economy dry. The confrontation with China has a long-term and systemic component and a short-term and circumstantial one. The latter is what underlies his support for Taiwan, but for the same reasons above, it is not a red line for Trump. He will continue to support it because he needs the island’s chip factories. When he achieves self-sufficiency in this area, Taiwan will cease to be a burning issue for the United States. Trump is not willing to continue supporting an issue that means a great expenditure of resources and that had its origin in the Cold War. It is not through Taiwan that Trump will structure the strategic confrontation with China.
It must be reiterated that Trump’s method is to raise issues that are not on the agenda in order to measure the responses that arise from the statement. Thus, when the issue becomes popular, the implementation of measures to be taken is already prepared and advanced. His main foreign policy issues will be China, migration and energy, and his actions will be structured around them.