Let’s review some of the ways that the Trump Administration is eroding America’s global influence, reputation, and competitiveness.
Soft Power
A 2024 Pew Research survey found that America’s average approval rating across residents of 34 countries was 54%, as opposed 31% who disapproved. A year later, the U.S. approval rating had dropped modestly to 49%, but the disapproval rating jumped to 49% among 24 countries surveyed. Moreover, only 34% of respondents expressed confidence in Donald Trump to “do the right thing” in world affairs, as opposed to 62% who lacked confidence (compared with 49% who lacked confidence in Joe Biden in 2024).
Foreign Aid
The Trump Administration has dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development, fired most of its employees, and transferred a handful of remaining programs to the Department of State. A research report published in the Lancet, a British medical journal, projected that the Trump Administration’s 85% cut to U.S. humanitarian assistance abroad would result in an estimated 14 million premature and preventable deaths in low-income countries. The abandonment of foreign aid as a tool of American foreign policy will result in a loss of influence abroad and fuel political instability in poor countries that previously depended heavily upon American assistance.
Diplomacy
In July, 2025, the Trump Administration announced the firing of over 1300 civil servants and diplomatic staff in the State Department. Trump has proposed closing ten U.S. embassies and seventeen consulates abroad. The Trump Administration has sought to eliminate funding for the National Endowment for Democracy and the U.S. Institute for Peace. This unilateral diplomatic disarmament will hinder our visibility into potential threats abroad, forego fruitful collaborations, and lessen our diplomatic capacity to resolve conflicts.
Public Diplomacy
The Trump Administration has sought to defund the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which is the host agency for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Marti, Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, and the Middle East Broadcasting Network. These agencies provide access to accurate news and information for people living in countries lacking a free press. They also support American soft power.
Science and Innovation
America’s economic competitiveness, especially in relation to China, depends upon robust support for science and innovation. Yet the Trump Administration has carried out dramatic cuts to research funding by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. Overall, basic science funding has been cut by one third and research universities are being pummeled in a multi-front assault by the Trump Administration, that includes higher taxes on endowments, lower overhead reimbursement rates on Federal grants, and caps on Federal loans for graduate study. Innovation is also connected to America’s traditional ability to attract the best and the brightest from around the world. Indeed, half of billion dollar startups in the U.S. are founded by immigrants. Unfortunately, international student flows to the US are being hampered an anti-immigrant climate and a threat to deny visas to applicants who may have posted critical remarks about the U.S. or the Trump Administration on social media.
Multilateral Organizations
Shortly after taking office, the Trump Administration announced U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord, the United Nations Human Rights Council, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), and the World Health Organization. The Trump Administration has zeroed out funding for U.N. peacekeeping. U.S. funding previously accounted for 27% of the U.N.’s peacekeeping budget. Overall, Trump’s FY 2026 budget request cuts U.N. funding by 87%.
Trade and Tariffs
The Trump Administration’s global tariff war is not only disrupting global supply chains and raising costs for American consumers, but also prompting our trade partners to seek out closer trade ties among themselves and to lessen dependence upon the United States. While many continue to explore trade deals with the U.S., they do so aware that any agreement could be quickly overturned by Donald Trump and so is worth little more than the paper on which it is written.
Alliances
While the administration deserves some credit for pushing NATO allies to spend more on defense, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine played a bigger role in prompting a rethinking of European defense needs. Though Trump’s threats to pull the U.S. out of NATO seem to have receded for now, European confidence in America’s commitment to the continent’s security remains at a low ebb. As a result, Germany, Britain, and France have begun strengthening formal and informal ties as a hedge against American isolationism.
Intelligence
Trump appointees have carried out ideological purges of top officials in various intelligence agencies. In early May, the Trump administration announced plans to cut thousands of positions in the CIA, NSA, and other intelligence organizations.
Trump has repeatedly cast public aspersions on the findings of the intelligence community. During his first term, Trump publicly declared his faith in Vladimir Putin’s denials of Russian interference in the 2016 election in direct contradiction of his own intelligence community’s assessment. In March, 2025, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified before Congress that the intelligence community had concluded that Iran had not made a decision to assemble a nuclear weapon and had not reconstituted weaponization efforts abandoned in 2003. Later, when asked about Gabbard’s statements, Trump declared: “I don’t care what she said” and claimed that Iran was close to possessing a bomb. After the bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities, Trump denounced a preliminary assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency that the attack left Iraq in a position to reconstitute its nuclear enrichment program within months. Trump called the report “flat out wrong” and contended that Iran’s nuclear program had been “obliterated.”
The politicization of intelligence and the loss of a great deal of institutional memory and knowledge will undercut the reputation of the U.S. intelligence community and weaken the willingness of allied countries to share information with the U.S. or to rely upon intelligence that the U.S. shares with them.
Overall, the foundations of American leadership built over the past century are quickly being eroded. “America First” threatens to make “America Last.”
The Internationalist 