Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
With the return of Donald Trump to the White House in 2025, governments around the world must adjust their sights away from a traditional globalist orientation by the United States and focus on the vagaries of return to “America First” foreign policies in Washington. The latter has been described as a “transactional” approach that privileges U.S. interests and forces world leaders to brace themselves for unpredictability rather than reliability from the United States.
However, Trump’s treatment of allies and partners is more predictable than they may surmise. Trumpian statements proliferate about the need for counterparts to do more and to pay their fair share.
“One of the presidents of a big country stood up said, ‘Well sir, if we don’t pay and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?’ I said, ‘You didn’t pay, you’re delinquent,’ he said. ‘Yes, let’s say that happened.’ ‘No, I would not protect you in fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want you got to pay. You got to pay your bills.’”
(February 10, 2024—Trump Campaign in Conway, South Carolina)
“. . . for years, we were paying almost all of NATO. We were being ripped off by European nations both on trade and on NATO. I got them to pay up by saying one of the statements you made before, if you don’t pay, we’re not going to protect you.”
(September 10, 2024—Harris-Trump presidential debate)
“[The European Union] treat us violently. They don’t take our cars. We take their cars by the millions. They don’t take our farm product. Very little of it. We take their farm product. They take almost nothing. We have a deficit with them of way over $200 billion.”
(July 16, 2024—Bloomberg interview)
“Look, a couple of things. No. 1, Taiwan. I know the people very well, respect them greatly. [Taiwan] take about 100% of our chip business, I think. Taiwan should pay us for defense. You know, we’re no different than an insurance company. Taiwan doesn’t give us anything.”
(July 16, 2024—Bloomberg interview)
Trump has also made very clear from long before he entered national politics that he strongly opposes the stationing of U.S. forces abroad in affluent allied countries like South Korea and Germany, as this CSIS dataset shows.
While we cannot predict his policies on any specific issue, we can surmise as to his motives. The graphic below shows two metrics by which Trump may measure his support for NATO and Indo-Pacific allies and partners based on his first term in office and his campaign statements. In Trump’s mind, the “Safe Zone” represents those allies and partners that (1) do not have a trade surplus with the United States and (2) spend more than 3 percent of GDP on defense. These allies will not draw Trump’s ire. However, those allies and partners in the “Danger Zone” do not spend enough on defense (i.e., less than 3 percent of GDP) and “cheat” the United States on trade (i.e., experience trade surpluses). These leaders and countries will be very much in Trump’s crosshairs.
The graphic below visualizes data for all NATO and Indo-Pacific allies and partners. It identifies where each government measures in terms of trade and defense spending.
Victor Cha is the president of the Geopolitics and Foreign Policy Department and Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
