America First could be the right policy. But America First is not Trump’s real policy. That’s the problem.
President Trump’s “America First” policies have been hailed as a solution for many disillusioned Americans. He won re-election by becoming a vehicle for a disenchanted population to vent their anger, fear, and frustration with the current system, one that has legitimately failed the vast majority of our population. In a sense, Trump was right: for far too long, the gap has grown between the haves and have-nots. But he and his policies are doing nothing to fix it.
Trump and his allies’ efforts are simply wallpaper slogans covering self-dealing, the pursuit of short term gains, and rampant corruption. You can’t squeeze blood from a turnip, and Trump and his cronies adding billions more to their bottom line while crushing everyday Americans is simply short-term thinking with long-term damage wrapped in a patriotic slogan. While I’m a true capitalist at heart, even a true capitalist knows that the rich get richer when the poor get richer. You can’t just eek out what you can now at the expense of the future – that’s plain dumb.
There are real, ready-to-go policy changes that could benefit everyone, the rich and the poor, and rightfully be called “America First.” For example, increasing the volume of housing to reduce the growth rate of housing prices so that every American spends no more than 30% of their income on rent or a mortgage would inject $1 trillion additional dollars in discretionary spending annually into the economy, for example. Corporations who make those goods would benefit, as would everyday Americans who have the money to spend on them. Similarly, the U.S. is too over-reliant on drugs and processed foods, and we could eliminate vast swaths of the farm bill and regulate the pharmaceutical industry (as we did the health insurance industry) to bring the prices of food and medication down. But these truly “America first” moves aren’t the policies we’re pursuing as a country.
Instead, the Trump administration is playing whack-a-mole with real problems by putting headlines and hatchet jobs in front of holistic reforms. They’re playing “burn it all down” without realizing that you actually can’t build it back up better, if at all. Governing is not a game. It is a temporary permission, renewed through elections, from 330 million people to provide security, stability, and opportunity. And mandate or not (and the vote totals say “not”), Trump’s so-called “America First” policies are doing nothing of the sort.
Sadly, simply naming policies “America First” doesn’t actually mean they put America first. Instead, these policies hurt our short-term interests, put our economy at extreme risk of faltering (and not for the reasons you think), undermine the relationship of our government to its people, and ultimately, irreparably damage our strength and dominance at home and abroad.
Let’s get concrete and cut through the fluff with some honesty.
We can accept that for many decades, America has been the guiding light and dominant, sole superpower in the world. However, that is not by accident, and it’s not “being taken advantage of,” financially or otherwise. Our aid, military protection, and trade deficits weren’t being “ripped off”– they were the price for our dominance.
China’s rise is a testament to that fact: they are the one power who learned our lessons and have replicated them with success. Their military expansion, their aid programs (“One Belt, One Road”), and economic engine, fueled by population and per capita income growth, are just cheaper clones of the American model, minus democracy and human rights.
Let’s start with military power. Yes, we created Pax Americana…and our sole ability to direct general world peace through military might means fewer people die now as the result of war than at any time in history. But it also means almost everyone was reliant on us…and therefore bent to our will more often than not. Did we pay the cost for their peaceful enjoyment? Yes. And in exchange, we had unrivaled power and influence we used to advance our own interests. They didn’t pay us back in dollars, they paid us back in dominance.
Much as we built military pre-eminence, we built a system of soft power through foreign aid that supported a global Pax Americana while furthering our own interests. Our dollars fostered other countries’ abilities to grow their economies, combat disease, and keep security threats at bay, sure. But soft-power aid programs also built strong ties to undergird our dominance by reinforcing the binds created by our military dominance: the intersection of soft and hard power in harmony.
Did that system involve some corruption? Yes, of course. Like us protecting others militarily while protecting ourselves, that’s not being taken advantage of, that’s the price of doing business. In just one example, because we were able to catch Ebola in the villages where it started, it never reached American shores. In fact, we only had one global pandemic in 100 years, while there were over 30 regional pandemics in the last 50 years alone. Aid dollars didn’t just save lives, they saved money. Can you imagine the economic impact of COVID-level rescue programs having to be repeated?
Moreover, aid dollars didn’t just foster health and security in the countries where we spent them, they fostered real economic growth – which meant more export markets, more economic reliance on the US, and the impenetrable strength of the dollar. Why is this important? As the Marshall Plan long-ago proved, aid dollars that rebuild or build markets lead to greater American financial returns and dominance: more markets to buy American goods and services. Helping poor or devastated countries grow, and making them reliant on American relationships, not only expands our export and service markets, it gives us greater control.
Because of this aid and military might, the dollar became the world’s reserve currency after the Bretton Woods conference in 1948, which is the foundation of our economic might. While the legal requirement to use dollars was abandoned a few decades later, the greenback stayed the de facto world’s sole reserve currency, in spite of attempts by others to provide alternatives (the failed “Euro experiment”). Why does that matter? Just take a look at America’s credit card bill.
The dominant dollar means our borrowing costs are cheaper and we can run up as much debt as we want without facing the risks other countries do—and those same countries are forced to buy our debt to keep the system going. (I’m not a fan of huge debt loads, but we have one, so until we can find ways to pay it down, we had better make sure we don’t trip any wires.) So was there a trade deficit imbalance? Yes, if you are looking only at import/export numbers for hard goods. But when you add in the export of American services on top of our debt structure, in order to view the whole global financial picture, you realize there’s a circle of life, so to speak.
Foreign countries bought our goods, and we bought theirs…and the imbalance? The difference was cured though economic dominance and the almighty dollar…and the ability to issue debt to finance our own growth at a lower cost and higher return than any other country on the planet. Economics is more complicated than “we bought two shipping containers and they only bought one,” and the economy is no longer a primarily manufacturing based one either; services drive American growth. The whole picture matters.
Part of that picture includes security. Our economic power doesn’t just put dollars in our pocket – it keeps you safe. You want to know why China hasn’t gone to war over Taiwan yet? It’s not just our nuclear arsenal and the threat of World War III. It’s the fact that they hold trillions of dollars of American debt. War would completely devalue their holdings, upend their economic growth by bringing US-Chinese trade to a standstill, and throw their country into total chaos. It’s not the missiles protecting us, it’s the dollars.
All of this? Military, aid, and economic might? It has empowered American growth and dominance. What goes around, comes around. We recovered from the 2008 financial crisis faster than any other country. Our economy recovered from the pandemic faster than any other country. Our inflation rate came down faster than any other country. Why? Because our economic, military, and soft power put America first.
If you view the world as Trump and his acolytes do, each policy through a limited lens, it can be tempting to see the world in isolated statements. There’s a trade imbalance. There’s corruption in aid programs. There’s too much waste. But when you view the whole picture, you realize we’ve spent the last 80 years building a global financial, policy, and military machine that largely bends to our will, and the cost of corruption, waste, and trade imbalances is miniscule in comparison to what we’ve gained. Should we engage in institutional reforms to reduce those problems? Yes. But never at the cost of our power.
Instead, the direct result of Trump’s limited understanding of how our power was created and sustained means his “America First” policies place America last. Our government is not a business—it was created to serve its people, all its people. Our constitution and our constitutional order (the relationship of a government to its people) are clear: we must serve our people. Instead, American consumers will pay more. Tariff-free American factories will not, and cannot, be built overnight. Jobs will be lost as foreign markets retaliate. It’s a downward spiral of isolationist, protectionist policy that has led to economic disaster and global war three times in the last 200 years.
If I told you there were two policies, and one led to 12 depressions and 3 global wars from 1860 through 1941, while the other had fostered almost unimpeded growth since 1945 and kept America safe, which would you choose? Slogans aside, track records are unimpeachable.
Trump’s America First policies are rah-rah nationalism and empty flag waving. The global system was built to bend to our will, and has. Now, by retreating within our own shores, cutting military, economic, and aid ties with foreign countries, we will find the world bending to others’ will, those who fill the gap. And that looming “existential threat” by the Chinese that Trump and his team rightfully call out? It will become reality, not simply a feared possibility.