A critical look at the Trump Doctrine

“God, love, and tariffs.” These three words became Donald Trump’s rallying cry throughout his campaign and, later, the hallucinatory years of Trumpism. They seem to have been plucked straight from the perfect populist’s playbook, echoing the “work, family, and country” ethos of the 1930s. The parallels to fascism in Trump’s rhetoric are so stark that they’re already being studied at Harvard

Trump’s favored mantra, “common sense,” which European neo-fascists so skillfully adopt. His inauguration speech alone could serve as material for one of those doctoral theses political scientists excel at writing — thoroughly analyzing what has already transpired yet offering little insight into how it could have been prevented or what might come next. (A criticism that, arguably, also applies to modern journalism — but that’s another story.)

The Trump Doctrine is already a colossal shock, a stress test for American democracy, which is another way of saying the international liberal order. It is one of those historical inflection points, a moment when history pivots and reshapes itself.

Here are a few keys to analyze the first steps taken by the new tenant of the White House, which will mark a generation “thrown by destiny into a universal shock as violent as a waterfall.” The author of that phrase, Stefan Zweig, was not thinking of Trump when he wrote it, but of the toxic context of almost a century ago: the temptation of metaphor, of abusing one of those assonant rhymes that history sometimes leaves behind.

Surprise?

Trump is no anomaly: he is the natural consequence of the accumulation of crises and fears of recent times. Nor are his first measures a surprise. He has been counting them off throughout the campaign. He had been carefully honing them for four years. That brassy tone, which seeks to sow fear and dread, is part of his strategy: this is how many wars are won without firing a shot.

Migration and energy

In the very first minute of his presidency, Trump declared a national emergency on immigration. Yet, it’s worth noting that Joe Biden deported more people in 2024 than Trump did during his entire first term. The initial wave of deportations under Trump is expected to be dramatic: military deployments to the Mexican border, televised raids, and high-profile crackdowns. However, the facts remain stubborn — the U.S. requires thousands upon thousands of migrants. The question now is whether Trump will follow through on his bravado.

The second emergency is energy. Trump has vowed to “drill, drill, and drill” to bring down oil and gas prices, as inflation and the erosion of purchasing power remain powerful drivers of discontent — not just in Washington but globally. However, such price drops are rarely as immediate as promised. Once again, we are left to wait and see, despite this flood of bombastic executive orders — many of which are likely to face legal challenges.

Tariffs?

Not so fast. On this matter, it’s not even a case of “wait and see”; all we can do is wait. No tariff measures have appeared among the first wave of decrees. Nothing good can come from this, particularly for Europe, which has amassed a colossal trade surplus with the United States. Yet, it is curious that despite his many promises and volcanic temperament (“Trump is a worthy heir of St. Ignatius, both soldier and saint, the worst possible combination,” as Jorge Volpi observes), he appears cautious. He understands all too well that a misstep could backfire.

Trump’s trade policy is set to be a constant bargaining chip to extract advantages. He’s already threatening tariffs on China if it doesn’t sell a stake in TikTok, and he’s poised to pressure European countries with unilateral tariffs on exports unless they comply with his demands — chiefly, investing in the U.S. and buying American goods. America First.

One example of this transactional approach: Germany alone holds a trade surplus of €65 billion ($66.95 billion) annually with the U.S. Trump is going to want Berlin to purchase American arms and natural gas to offset that figure. This sets the stage for a formidable test of European unity. The warning signs are already loading the trigger of what feels like a chronicle of a catastrophe foretold — a narrative all too familiar when it comes to Europe.

But one key indicator offers hope: Brexit. While unity was predicted to crumble in its aftermath, it remains intact. Europe has a way of proving as patient and resilient as the doomsayers’ most dire predictions.

Crony capitalism

A handful of techno-oligarchs, led by the histrionic Elon Musk, were in the front row at Trump’s inauguration. That photograph is perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Trumpism: if the important thing is to know who is in charge, as that character in Alice in Wonderland said, Musk, Bezos and company have just made it very clear that the king is naked. It was they who financed his campaign. They are the guardians of the sounding board of alternative facts, the social networks. And they are the ones who are going to litigate with Brussels. In return, Trump is going to give them a free hand with artificial intelligence and with regulation affecting their companies. There is going to be nothing like the idea of chopping up those monopolies that was on the table. The golden years of the U.S., which Trump likes so much, came after the U.S. institutions were able to split the monopolies against all pressures. Those were other times; less dystopian, less Orwellian. “Russian oligarch” seemed an unrivaled pleonasm, but an era of “American oligarchs” is dawning.

Multilateral collapse

This imperialist message directed at Panama, Greenland, and others is pure bravado, but the first steps toward the abyss always begin with words. The multilateral framework of 1945 collapsed under our noses: a house of cards is still a castle, but this one showed obvious signs of fatigue. The U.N. has been unable to be credible in the face of the genocides and invasions of recent times. Bretton Woods has been mortally wounded for years, but the IMF’s disavowal is a kind of coup de grâce. NATO is faltering, like the Paris Agreements or the World Health Organization. Trump talks about zones of influence, but in his inaugural speech, he didn’t cite either China or Russia. “What he seems to be saying to Putin and Xi is: we divide up the world, but don’t piss me off,” Wall Street sources point out. The struggle with China to become the hegemonic power is one of the great keys of the coming times. This shift in power has never, ever been easy.

That leaves Europe in no man’s land, with the far-right tide rising and the German center-right winking at Meloni. The EU has been appealing to its soft power and enlightened values for years; in turn, it shamelessly protected its interests, toughened its migration policy to shocking extremes and benefited from U.S. defense, cheap energy from Russia and demand from China, a country that continues to make orchestral maneuvers in the dark with human rights.

That recipe — so German — is not going to survive Trump: it is up to Europe to reinvent itself on the geopolitical chessboard and it is ill-equipped to do so; perhaps its formidable purchasing power is its best weapon. “We are like when Varoufakis was [finance] minister in Greece and appealed to supposedly European and enlightened values. And that rhetoric is fine, but in view of what happened with Varoufakis, we should be sophisticated enough to understand that either you have a good plan and the strength to implement it, or there is nothing to do,” explains one analyst. That of the boxer Mike Tyson: “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

How do you stop this?

The control of the narrative by the extremist tide is stupefying, with the networks deploying their arsenal of toxicities. The Democrats in the U.S. have not been able to quell this tsunami, even with full employment and 3% growth. The ultra-conservative wave continues to gain height in Europe, all over the world. Perhaps the only recipe is to wait for them to make mistakes, to go too far — a poor consolation — as many people believe the left did in matters of rights, environmental issues, everything that has to do with the woke agenda, that proscribed word.

“The wolf is coming” has only worked in Spain. To turn this scenario around, the first thing to do is figure out what game is being played: this is no longer tennis, not even soccer, this is rugby. Why is a fake narrative of all falsehood imposed? Because in contact sports you cannot play with one hand tied behind your back. Because social democracy — including that of the U.S. Democrats — has failed miserably; its elites are increasingly distant from those at the bottom even though they say, paying lip service, that inequality is the greatest challenge of our times. Because Trump has been able to take off his mask and get rid of the liberal elites’ high-pitched discourse to get closer to the people’s reality. Because the succession of crises of recent times has left an unbearable mixture of anger, uncertainty, fear, and dread. And because we have forgotten Aesop.

In one of his fables, a horse decides to take revenge on a deer and begins to chase it; when he sees that he cannot catch up with it, he asks for help from a hunter, who only agrees if he can bridle him. With his help, the horse soon defeats the deer. But when he asks the hunter to let him go, the hunter replies: “Not so fast, my friend. I’ve got you by the bridle and spurs now, and I’d rather keep you as a gift.” And there’s Trump, who looks like a cross between that fable and a dictator’s playbook.

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