Trump’s Final Foreign-Policy Report Card

 https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/01/05/trumps-final-foreign-policy-report-card/

It’s worth recalling what he promised to do. Like most of his political platform, Trump’s foreign policy sprang from a sense of grievance. He thought the rest of the world was taking advantage of the United States; he was going to put “America first” instead. Allies would pay full price for U.S. protection, adversaries would be confronted and vanquished, and the United States would pursue its own self-interest with scant regard for diplomatic niceties. He’d stop China from “stealing” American jobs and take the United States out of “bad deals” like the Paris climate accord and the nuclear agreement with Iran. Portraying himself as a master negotiator, he promised to reach “beautiful” new trade deals that would restore U.S. manufacturing and usher in a new era of prosperity. The United States would play the sucker no longer: It would get “out of the nation-building business,” crack down on immigration, rebuild a supposedly weak defense establishment, and get Mexico to pay for a wall on the southern border.

But it was more than a missed opportunity, because Trump’s blunders have left the United States in much worse shape than when he took office. For President-elect Joe Biden and his team, the bad news is that they have an enormous amount of repair work to do. The good news, such as it is, is that it won’t be hard to do better than the people they are succeeding