Democrats have spent much of the last four years pummeling President Donald Trump’s “America First” approach to the world. But as President-elect Joe Biden and his emerging foreign policy team prepare to take office, they should be careful not to throw out the baby with the bath water.
Biden is right to scrap Trump’s destructive unilateralism and insulting attitude toward democratic allies. Yet Trump has been heading in the right direction by downsizing the nation’s military commitments in the Middle East and pulling back on foreign trade.
Biden would be wise to follow Trump’s lead when it comes to ending the nation’s forever wars and standing up to China on trade. Doing so would be good politics as well as good policy.
If Biden’s presidency is to be more than a respite from Trump’s angry brand of populism, he needs to revive the nation’s political center. While the left and right are miles apart on many domestic issues, foreign policy offers Biden an opportunity to rebuild the middle ground.
There is a bipartisan consensus that the nation has over-reached in the Middle East. Trump correctly read the electorate’s inward turn and its weariness with strategic overstretch. To be sure, he has been playing to his base by pulling U.S. troops out of the region, substantially cutting force levels in Afghanistan and Iraq even after losing the November election.
Trump’s preference for easing off on foreign entanglement has gone mainstream. A recent survey revealed that three-quarters of Americans want U.S. troops to leave Afghanistan and Iraq, and the 2020 Democratic platform calls for “turning the page on two decades of large-scale military deployments and open-ended wars in the Middle East.”
In similar fashion, Biden should tone down Trump’s strident economic protectionism but continue efforts to ensure that more Americans benefit from global trade. Although foreign trade boosts employment in the export sector and reduces the cost of consumer goods, import competition from China has cost the United States at least 2 million jobs since 1999, many of them in the manufacturing sector.
Opinion surveys reveal that most Americans see international trade as benefiting the U.S. economy, but they want trade deals more favorable to U.S. workers.
As with his approach to strategic pullback, Trump has made a hash of trade policy. His slapdash tariffs have failed to appreciably boost manufacturing employment, and the U.S. trade deficit hit a 14-year high this past summer. Rather than picking trade fights with everyone, Biden should drop Trump’s tariffs on allies and instead confront China with a united front of major economies.
Biden’s victory may have been narrower than many of us had hoped for. Rather than merely lamenting Trump’s strong showing, Democrats need to harvest lessons from his presidency to revive the nation’s political center. Crafting a foreign policy that appeals to left and right alike is a good place to start.
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Charles Kupchan is professor of international affairs at Georgetown University and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.