By Nick Redman
As global leadership fractures, Nick Redman examines the implications of America’s inward turn. With Trump abandoning international norms and alliances, the United States may be forfeiting its hegemonic status. Redman asks whether this gamble will preserve American power—or hand global influence to rivals like China and a waiting world.
Ever since the end of the Second World War, the United States has enjoyed hegemonic status, the pivotal actor in a global system that it largely devised, including a dense network of international organisations, treaties and defensive alliances. Over time, its share of global wealth, trade, investment and military power has shrunk. This happens to all hegemons and leads eventually to them being displaced. Yet in important parts of the world, from Europe to Africa, Trump appears to be surrendering US hegemony voluntarily. Historically, this has no recent precedent. Trump believes US hegemony has served other nations more than his own, and so radical changes are needed. The key question is whether these will preserve the US as the most powerful country on earth, or whether it will hasten its decline.
Primacists versus isolationists
The president’s team of advisers are far from united over the direction of travel, with isolationists and primacists vying to promote their agendas and set the course for US policy. Isolationists want the US to withdraw from much of the world and erect high tariff and physical barriers around America. Primacists want to remain internationally engaged, somewhat, but radically to reorder relations between the US and its allies in line with ‘America First’ principles. Another group, standing somewhere between the two, want to focus US efforts on countering and containing China. Trump insists that his country should remain pre-eminent. But there’s a problem. He wants to draw all the benefits of hegemony without having to bear the associated costs. As with many of his objectives, these are difficult – and perhaps ultimately impossible – to reconcile. The risk for the administration is that it will leave America economically weaker domestically and much-diminished internationally.
Throughout history, hegemons have rarely ceded power – they tend to get knocked off their perches. In promoting the ‘America First’ agenda, Trump is willingly withdrawing from the world geographically and from spheres of engagement, such as development finance, security cooperation and global decarbonisation efforts. His focus instead is on reviving America’s industrial fortunes, protecting her borders from illegal migrants, and limiting US foreign engagement to areas of the world, such as the Gulf and Asia-Pacific regions, that best serve its economic and security interests.
Tariffs play into China’s hands
The primacists are reluctant to relinquish America’s hegemonic status, not least because they see retreat as largely benefiting principal rival China – which they want to confront and contain. But the America First-driven tariff hikes have alienated Europe and unsettled much of the developing world, particularly Africa and South-East Asia, creating opportunities for Beijing to both cement and extend its influence. President Xi Jinping lost no time in seeking to do so. His recent tour of Vietnam, Cambodia and Malaysia – some of the fastest-growing economies in the region – sought to court and reassure Asian states facing hefty American tariffs. Xi’s message was essentially that China won’t close the door on them and will remain the defender of an open global trading system.
While the US tariff hikes have generated all the headlines, a swathe of other isolationist measures are further eroding bilateral and multilateral relations with longstanding partners and allies, undermining the primacists’ cause. The administration’s suspension of USAID, withdrawal from the World Health Organisation and the Paris Climate Agreement, and proposed cutting of funds for international peacekeeping operations, could make it even harder for primacists to build alliances to counter China geopolitically. Trump’s ability to attract allies to its cause are undermined by tariffs, his penchant for autocrats and threats to annex Canada and Greenland.
Africa and Europe look to China
Moreover, there’s a risk that many countries will rather choose to become less reliant on the US and pivot towards China, which today has a larger share of global trade than America. Europe, though wary of China’s anti-competitive trading practices and human rights record, sees scope for cooperation with Beijing. Kenya has already signaled that it wants closer ties, South Africa too and other African countries may well follow, looking to boost their exports to Chinese markets. China is already ahead of America in the race for Africa’s critical minerals and its lead could now grow, which should concern US isolationists and primacists alike, as these commodities are key components of advanced technologies in American civil and defence industries.
The primacists’ ability to repair the diplomatic damage, and maintain some semblance of US global authority, could be frustrated by the isolationists’ ongoing attempts to neuter America’s foreign affairs expertise and soft power. Efforts are underway to effectively close independent, congressionally-funded US foreign policy think tanks, the Wilson Centre and the US Institute for Peace. Funds for Voice of America and Radio Free Europe have been frozen. And there are apparent plans for deep cuts to the State Department, threatening hundreds of agency offices and staff , with a number of embassies and consulates in Europe and Africa in the firing line. This comes on top of the state department’s loss of over ten per cent of its foreign affairs specialists in the first year of Trump’s first administration.
Lack of skills to strike deals and resolve conflicts
The weakening of America’s diplomatic heft could work against the isolationists’ own interests, as they seek to wring concessions from trading partners and resolve longstanding conflicts that they no longer wish to be involved in. Trump insists that scores of countries are rushing to do deals with the US. But the economic powers that matter, such as the EU, Japan, Canada, and certainly China, will prove more of a challenge, requiring precisely the diplomatic expertise Trump seems happy to dispense with. Already, that expertise has been sorely lacking as the administration struggles to secure a resolution of the Ukraine conflict and an end to the Gaza war. With both, there have been miscalculations that suggest geopolitical naivety, at best, and craven bias, at worst.
The trouble for isolationists and primacists is that American diplomacy under the mercurial Trump can be unpredictable. Indeed, there’s a risk that the president’s whims, especially his affinity for strong, autocratic leaders, will frustrate or even derail foreign policy objectives, especially with regard to China. They may not be on good terms right now, but Trump has expressed admiration for President Xi in the past. That admiration might return if Xi were to offer face-to-face talks over tariffs. Direct meetings with Putin led to Trump essentially adopting Russian talking points on the Ukraine war. So, it would be unwise to bet against the US leader going rogue and striking a deal with Xi that is more favourable to China than either isolationists or primacists would have wanted.
Limited appetite for reshoring
Domestically, it’s too early to say whether Trump’s leveraging of tariffs will secure the economic outcomes he seeks, principally the revival of American manufacturing. Currently paused, with the exception of those against China, tariffs are blunt tools, which risk doing more harm than good to the economy, even possibly tipping the US into recession. They might raise some revenue for tax cuts and constrain access to American markets to help domestic industries. But any such benefit could be outweighed by their fueling of inflation – which most Americans anticipate – and business uncertainty. This plus high labour costs, expensive inputs (made more so by tariffs) and skills shortages may deter multinationals from reshoring. Nearly half of companies questioned in a CNBC supply chain survey said moving manufacturing back to America would nearly double their costs. And most said that if they were to reshore, they would favour automation over workers.
If Trump’s America continues to shed responsibilities accumulated over decades and to disrupt global trade, politics and security, there will be a growing interest in how the global leadership gap might be filled. There is no power able or willing to be a like-for-like substitute. But Europe and China, if they can reach a modus vivendi over trade, despite the risk of Chinese goods being dumped on European markets and triggering a global tariff war, could cooperate on several fronts. These include trade, global health, development and decarbonisation. How might Trump then respond? To see others leading would be a new, unsettling experience for American decision-makers. Once they drove conversation around global policy. Now they may not even be invited into the room. Future US governments may seek to bolster alliances and refashion the instruments of soft power destroyed in the first 100 days. But they will discover that building or rebuilding takes years of patient investment; and the world might not wait.
About the Author
Nick Redman is Director of Analysis at Oxford Analytica and Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Brief, which provides analysis of emerging trends and developments in the global political economy every working day.
