Donald Trump's foreign policy approach focuses on reducing America's global role, with proposals to take unilateral actions, abandon security alliances, and embrace adversarial relationships. His vague and often contradictory statements leave many unsure about his actual plans, with potential implications such as increased tariffs and the scuttling of international agreements. Analysts warn of unpredictability in his policy execution and the challenges posed by entrenched foreign policy institutions.

1. What Is Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy?
By MAX FISHER NOV. 11, 2016
Donald J. Trump in New York on election night. He seems to approach foreign policy as a
series of deals, each divided between a winner and a loser. Credit Damon Winter/The New
York Times
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump will enter the White House having
promised to radically alter United States foreign policy, with ramifications for Americans
and the world.
But it’s not yet clear how. Mr. Trump offered vague and sometimes contradictory proposals
during his campaign, with few of the typical details or white papers. Voters, foreign policy
professionals and the country’s allies are all, to a real extent, left guessing.

2. Here, then, is a rundown of what we know about Mr. Trump’s foreign policy ideas and
what some experts say about their feasibility and likely ramifications.
What are Mr. Trump’s proposed policies?
Mr. Trump has repeatedly emphasized a set of ideas that would reduce America’s role in
the world. He said he would take unilateral action, move away from traditional allies and
move closer to adversaries.
He said during the campaign that he would diminish or possibly abandon American
commitments to security alliances. That includes NATO and defense treaties with Japan
and South Korea.
He has threatened to pull out of the World Trade Organization and called the North
American Free Trade Agreement “the single worst trade deal ever signed in this country.”
And he said he would “cancel” the international agreement on combating climate change,
reached last year in Paris.
Mr. Trump has suggested that more countries should acquire nuclear weapons, to protect
themselves without Washington’s help. He has said allies like Saudi Arabia must pay for
American support.
He has voiced admiration for Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president, and said the United
States should work with him and align with his Syrian ally, President Bashar al-Assad, in
that country’s civil war.
But Mr. Trump, not a dove, has indicated a willingness to use force and promised to
reinstate waterboarding, a form of torture.
“Somebody hits us within ISIS, you wouldn’t fight back with a nuke?” Mr. Trump asked
rhetorically in an MSNBC interview this spring.
When the Iranian Navy intercepted American sailors who had drifted into their waters, Mr.
Trump said that, had he been president, the Iranians would have been “shot out of the
water.” He has threatened to dismantle the international agreement that limits Iran’s nuclear
program.
He supports imposing punitive economic measures on China, threatening high tariffs that
would devastate trade between the world’s two largest economies.
He supported the United States-led invasion of Iraq at the time, but harshly criticized it
during the campaign, and he said that American troops should have “taken the oil” from
that country by force. He has also said that the United States should have seized Libya’s oil.
Perhaps most famously, he has promised to build a wall on the country’s southern border
and force Mexico to pay for it.

3. Are these sincere proposals, or just campaign talk?
It is difficult to extrapolate concrete plans from his pronouncements, particularly since they
are not always consistent.
Some days, for example, he called NATO “obsolete” and implied that he would reduce
American commitments to European security. On others, he did not go as far, saying only
that European states should contribute more to NATO and focus more on terrorism.
Some statements seemed mainly about making a political point. For example, Mr. Trump
said he opposed the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal because it “was designed for China
to come in, as they always do, through the back door,” though the deal excludes China.
The agenda seemed to change with his mood, and he has released relatively few policy
papers, making many foreign policy analysts wonder whether he may be entering office
without a plan.
“You should not believe anyone who says they know what Trump will do — even if that
person’s name is Donald Trump,” Jeremy Shapiro, research director of the European
Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in a postelection policy brief.
Could President-elect Trump execute his ideas?
American presidents enjoy unusual autonomy on foreign issues, and Mr. Trump would be
able to make some of his proposals happen quickly.
He could scuttle the Iran nuclear deal (though its European signatories would most likely
refuse efforts to negotiate a replacement), ignore United States commitments on climate
change and impose tariffs on China and Mexico.
But other policies would be more difficult to enact. Mexico, for instance, seems unlikely to
comply with his demand to pay for a border wall. Other ideas, such as seizing Iraq’s oil,
may not even be physically possible (the oil rests beneath the ground of a sovereign state).
His own administration could be his biggest roadblock.
Foreign policy is conducted by vast institutions — the Pentagon, State Department and
intelligence agencies — staffed with thousands of career officers.
Mr. Trump has only a handful of like-minded advisers. So he will need to staff these
agencies with his party’s foreign policy veterans — a group with which he has broken so
acrimoniously that many denounced him and his policies in open letters. Now, they will
have a sort of veto power over moves like withdrawing from NATO or striking Iran.
Elizabeth N. Saunders, a George Washington University political scientist, said that foreign
policy bureaucracies have often steered presidents, rather than the other way around. They

4. can stonewall or slow policies they dislike. Selective leaks to the public or to Congress can
put pressure on the commander in chief to behave in a certain way.
When presidents openly overrule their foreign policy staff, Ms. Saunders found, public
approval of that president and his policies often dives.
What is the Trump worldview?
Beneath his specific proposals — or pronouncements — there does appear to be a guiding
worldview.
Mr. Trump seems to see the world as chaotic and threatening and inhospitable to traditional
American objectives like democracy promotion or international institutions. In this world,
the United States must pursue its interests narrowly, unilaterally and with unapologetic
force.
Thomas Wright, a Brookings Institution scholar, wrote in a long study of Mr. Trump’s
views that he consistently expresses “opposition to America’s alliance relationships;
opposition to free trade; and support for authoritarianism.”
Mr. Trump calls this “American first,” and it would be a significant break with the role
Washington has played in upholding the global order since the end of World War II.
Perhaps owing to his years in the competitive world of New York real estate development,
Mr. Trump seems to approach foreign policy as a series of deals, each divided between a
winner and a loser.
This may explain his skepticism of alliances: If every interaction must conclude with one
party’s humiliating loss, then mutually beneficial agreements are neither appealing nor
possible.
The historian Walter Russell Mead places Mr. Trump within a “Jacksonian” tradition in
American foreign policy, referring to President Andrew Jackson, who served from 1829 to
1837: nationalist, populist, suspicious of the outside world — and willing to use force to
beat it back.
What would happen if President Trump instituted these policies?
In most cases, it is nearly impossible to say.
Because Mr. Trump’s policies are so unusual and his election victory so unexpected,
foreign nations have not indicated how they might respond. So it is difficult to judge even
the first-order effect of, say, a NATO withdrawal or a partnership with Mr. Assad in Syria,
much less any ripple effects.

5. In practice, much of foreign policy is responding to crises. Mr. Trump’s lack of experience
or clear proposals make it difficult to predict how he would handle, for example, a major
breakthrough in North Korea’s nuclear program or a major Russian cyberattack.
Some proposals, though, are easier to study.
An analysis by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a nonpartisan think tank,
found that Mr. Trump’s potential imposition of double-digit tariffs on China and Mexico
would, by decimating international trade, set off a recession in the United States and cost
4.8 million jobs.
Should he unravel the Iran nuclear deal, most analysts believe that Tehran would renew
nuclear development but that the deal’s other parties — Russia, China and several from
Europe — would blame the United States and decline to reimpose sanctions.
Beyond that, Mr. Trump’s likely impact on the world is difficult to predict. As Mr. Shapiro
wrote in his policy brief, “The essence of Trump’s foreign policy will be its
unpredictability.”
A version of this article appears in print on November 13, 2016, on Page A24 of the New
York edition with the headline: What We Know About Trump’s Foreign Policy Ideas.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/12/world/what-is-donald-trumps-foreign-
policy.html?_r=0