Trump's Trials - Trump's aggressive foreign policy decisions have shaken the globe

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

Many of President Trump's foreign policy moves, including suspending foreign aid and saying the U.S. should take over Gaza, have shaken the globe. Support NPR and hear every episode sponsor-free with NPR+. Sign up at plus.npr.org.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

I'm Scott Detro and you're listening to Trump's terms from NPR. We're going to be doing all sorts of things nobody ever thought was even possible. It's going to be a very aggressive first hundred days of the new Congress. An unpredictable and transformative next four years. The United States is going to take off like a rocket ship. Each episode we bring you NPR's coverage of President Trump acting on his own terms. And that means sometimes doing things that no American president has tried before. NPR is covering it all in stories

like the one you are about to hear right after this. At the Super Bowl halftime show, Kendrick Lamar indeed performed his smash diss track, Not Like Us, and brought out Samuel L. Jackson, Serena Williams, and SZA. We're recapping the Super Bowl, including why we saw so many celebrities in commercials this year. Listen to the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast from NPR.

There is a lot happening right now in the world of economics. You may have heard about the president's desire for a sovereign wealth fund. If your country is small, well governed, and has a surplus, it is probably a good idea. We are not any of those. We're here to cover federal buyouts, the cost of deportation and so much more. Tune in to MPR's The Indicator from Planet Money. I'm Michelle Martin. Earlier this week, President Trump pressured the King of Jordan to take in Palestinian

refugees so that the U.S. could, quote, take over and redevelop Gaza. Yet, just yesterday, he suggested Ukraine would have to cede territory to achieve peace with Russia. As NPR's Franco Ordoñez reports, those are just a couple examples of Trump's foreign policy that have shaken the globe. At his inaugural address, Trump declared the dawn of a new golden age for America. From this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world. In the hours and days that followed, Trump temporarily froze foreign aid. He began steps

to dismantle USAID and renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. The moves have raised questions of whether Trump's America first movement is moving from isolationism to imperialism. Bonnie Glaser, who directs the German Marshall Fund's Indo-Pacific program, says Trump is leaning into foreign policy in ways he didn't in his first term. This is America first on steroids. Trump was expected to pull the US out of international institutions and use trade threats as leverage for negotiating. But what is shock leaders around the world, she says, are the threats to take over Greenland, the Panama Canal, Gaza, and even Canada.

Trump wants to do everything he possibly can think of to strengthen the power of the United States, to bring investments to the US, jobs to the US, to control territory. Trump never bought into the rules-based system that encouraged cooperation among like-minded allies. The idea that lifting up friends economically, socially, and democratically would also lift the US. Ivo Daalder, who served as a US ambassador to NATO and the Obama administration, says Trump appears more emboldened to disrupt the system in ways he couldn't the first time.

He has a real clear sense that in this world and in this moment, the opportunity exists in ways that may not have existed in the first term or ever before to remake America's government and to remake America's role in the world. On his flight to the Super Bowl, Trump signed a proclamation making official the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. I asked him how all these moves align with America First. Because it makes us bigger, stronger and better. And more protected. And he says he and his team are better prepared this time. It's more aggressive. It's better. Why?

Because I think I've had a lot of experience. And in my first term I was fighting everybody because they were very aggressive towards me. In the process, Trump has done away with traditional roles of diplomacy. John Simon, who served as ambassador to the African Union and the Bush administration, points to Trump's handling of USAID, the government's agency to deliver humanitarian aid. He says the agency is one of the best ways to keep America safe from its enemies. We're taking away this incredibly valuable arrow in our quiver to build support and respect and influence around the world.

Instead, Trump has appropriated methods used by authoritarian powers such as China and Russia, says Lori Esposito Murray, a veteran in diplomatic circles now at the Council on Foreign Relations. President Trump is not using traditional diplomatic tools, diplomacy, to achieve objectives. He is actually using the tools and the approach that our adversaries use in order to achieve their objectives within their sphere of influence. She says Trump sees the Western Hemisphere as part of the US sphere of influence much like China views Taiwan and Russia, Ukraine. I think you can fold the Panama Canal and Greenland into that strategic thinking.

So, in Trump's view, putting America first. Franco or Donetsk, NPR News. Before we wrap up, a reminder, you can find more coverage of the incoming Trump administration on the NPR Politics Podcast, where you can hear NPR's political reporters break down the day's biggest political news, with new episodes every weekday afternoon. And thanks, as always, to our NPR Plus supporters who hear every episode of the show without sponsor messages. You can learn more at plus.npr.org. I'm Scott Detro. Thanks for listening to Trump's terms from NPR.