What ‘America First’ will look like in Trump’s second term

President-elect Donald Trump has long embraced the phrase “America First” in dealing with foreign policy. This theme started during his first campaign, and he doubled down in 2024.
It is true that the phrase has a sordid history from the 1930s, which amounted to isolationism, Nazi appeasement and antisemitism, but it is also true that America’s government should primarily champion the interests, values and goals of its citizens. So what does the philosophy mean for America and its allies today?
During his first term, Trump’s foreign policy was fairly traditional, run by traditional actors. Then, his vice president was Mike Pence, a mainstay of traditional Republican foreign policy if there ever was one, and now one of the most strident supporters of Ukraine and a harsh critic of the rise of isolationism on the right.
His top cabinet officials were military men like H.R. McMaster and John Kelly, and experienced foreign policy hands like former Sen. Dan Coats and State Department veteran Brian Hook. By and large, his administration conducted a traditional Republican foreign policy. He gave lethal aid to Ukraine, attempted to use trade and renewed alliances with countries like India to box in China, started a “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, and eliminated Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in retaliation for Iran’s provocations.
There were notable exceptions. Trump’s abandonment of America’s Kurdish allies in northern Syria was a key factor in the resignation of Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, a highly respected military leader. A very public summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, opposed by Trump’s then-national security adviser John Bolton, went on anyway. Fatalistically, he signed an agreement with the Taliban that effectively undercut the U.S. backed moderate government, a move also opposed by Bolton, Mattis and others in the administration.
Things have changed.
Trump’s vice president will be J.D. Vance, a vocal critic of Ukraine and a backer of what his fans would call restraint. Columnist George Will used far harsher terms, saying if Vance’s views are ultimately victorious, the Republican Party will be “more isolationist than either party was during the 1930s.” Few of Trump’s previous top foreign policy hands will be returning to the new administration. Moreover, the idea of “America First” has grown and evolved.
The America First Foundation, a think tank including many former Trump administration officials, argues that this philosophy is “pragmatic, interests-driven transactional engagement with other nations,” and emphasizes the need to avoid “economic overreach and unnecessary military conflicts.” It has published numerous articles and position papers on various related issues. Most are bare-bones, aimed more at attacking the Biden administration, rather than detailed policies on what is to be done next. But they at least offer something to go on. Meanwhile, Trump’s appointments so far send mixed signals.
The first major announcements were that Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a longtime member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Intelligence Committees, would be secretary of state, and Rep. Mike Waltz, a top military vet and Pentagon adviser, would be the national security adviser. Both are generally well thought of and fit well inside the historic Republican consensus, even if they have taken a somewhat different tack to fit more closely in Trump world, being somewhat less pro-Ukraine than more traditional Republicans.
On the other hand, Trump has nominated former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, a Democrat turned Republican, as the director of national intelligence, and Pete Hegseth, a former National Guardsman and Fox television host, as secretary of defense. Gabbard has been criticized by both parties for repeating the propaganda of Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin. Hegseth’s experience is less in defense policy as in veterans policy, working for veterans organizations, including the Concerned Veterans for America, one of the advocates for restraint. He’s also sent mixed signals on Ukraine and NATO. They are, in essence, the opposite of Rubio and Waltz.
Thus, there is a contest to define what “America First” means. Often, this has been discussed with regard to Ukraine as shorthand, with traditional Republicans supporting continued aid to Ukraine and the restraint advocates arguing against. But while it is true that this is a key concern, and as I’ve argued, perhaps the vital issue in terms of what will ultimately drive global politics, it is far from the only issue at play.
In the last part of the campaign, in Arab-heavy regions of Michigan — a constituency skeptical of Israel, to put it mildly — Trump said he’d bring peace to the Middle East, without giving any specifics. A Republican spokeswoman later said Trump wanted Israel to end its war with Iran’s proxies with a “decisive victory.” That’s a good answer on paper, but what if there is tension between Israel ending and winning the war?
Similarly, last summer, Trump questioned why Taiwan wasn’t paying more for its own defense, citing its success in the semiconductor industry, and he refused to say whether he’d defend Taiwan. This statement drew criticism from both Trump backers and opponents in Congress, and is the opposite of what Pence said in an op-ed shortly thereafter. It is, however, consistent with criticism from former advisers that Trump sees foreign policy as transactional. Since winning office, Trump has included billionaire international businessman Elon Musk, now Trump’s efficiency czar, in high-level calls with Ukrainian leadership, and Musk himself has met with senior Iranian diplomats. Musk, a mercurial figure with regard to foreign policy, has a complicated set of personal financial interests in Russia, China, Saudi Arabia and others, and throws another major curveball into things. Voters liked Trump’s first-term foreign policy by and large, and punished what they saw as American weakness in the Biden administration, with some good reasons, leading to the conflagrations in Israel, Ukraine and other places. At the same time, voters liked Trump’s critique of what they saw as overreach during the Bush and Obama years in Afghanistan and Iraq.
But projecting strength, while avoiding overreach, are impulses that are in tension. The bipartisan debacle of Afghanistan proves a difficult point: Voters may say they want a particular policy, such as withdrawal of U.S. troops from foreign lands, but they will punish leaders at the ballot box if those policies don’t work out.
Will Trump continue to back Ukraine if highly dubious talks with Putin are futile in expelling Russia from Ukraine? Will Trump prioritize winning, or ending, Israel’s war on Iran’s proxies? What will his policies about China entail? Will he support allies, such as Taiwan or Japan, if China encroaches in their space? What will his administration do if America’s short-term economic interests and our alliances conflict?
In other words, does “America First” look more like Trump’s first term, more like what Vance’s crowd might want, some mixture of the two, or something else altogether? I don’t think anyone really knows. But we’re about to find out.