Donald Trump was considered the best choice for foreign policy

The argument

Donald Trump's America First approach to foreign policy was more transactional than what had come before, and that was much of its appeal to the voters who chose him on this issue. He framed alliances in business terms, vowing to get better value from them or pull back from historic commitments he claims the US can no longer afford. Presented that way, alliances stopped being obligations inherited from an earlier era and became arrangements to be assessed on whether they paid — a framing that answered directly to voters who had come to feel the country was carrying costs abroad for which it saw no return. The same transactional logic ran through his campaign's treatment of the southern border. Trump argued that the illegal immigration of Mexicans into the United States increases crime rates and drug importation. He blamed the Mexican government for sending drug traffickers, criminals, ruffians, and rapists into America, and suggested that the Mexican government should be forced to pay for a southern-border wall because of all the problems their country brings into the United States. The proposal fused a security claim to a bill: the harm was said to originate abroad, so the cost of stopping it should fall abroad too. Trump's proposed ban on Muslim immigration to the United States rested on a similar structure. It claimed it impossible to tell whether immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries are Islamic radicals, or whether their children will become radicals, and treated that uncertainty as itself a reason to exclude. For the voters this argument describes, the appeal lay less in the detail of any single measure than in what they promised together. Americans believed that Trump would be the best hope for the country in the face of terrorism, a feat that previous administrations had failed to achieve.

Context

Foreign policy involves the strategies chosen by the state to safeguard its national interests. US foreign policy is its interactions with foreign nations and how it sets standards of interaction for its organisations, corporations and citizens.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Unlike most of his predecessors, Trump was a presidential candidate with no prior political or military experience. His strong affiliation with the world of money, business, and media means that his world-view is transactional and largely business-oriented. An America First policy will alienate allies and embolden rivals. In the process, it will damage United States commercial interests, undermining the institutions created post-World War II. Trump's spontaneity, unpredictability and informality adds to the ambiguity of his approach to foreign policy and could have profound geopolitical implications. Trump’s habit of issuing contradictory statements on the campaign trail make it tough to predict what he would do as President of the United States. A Trump presidency could make the United States, its citizens and its assets the single most attractive target for terrorist groups such as ISIS due to his anti-Muslim rhetoric.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Describing what a candidate promised is not evidence of why people voted for him — the premise sets out the platform without any polling or voter data connecting foreign policy to vote choice. [Rejecting P2] The pledges listed concern immigration and domestic security more than foreign policy, and the sibling positions offer rival explanations — dislike of the opposing candidate, and appeals to anxiety — that the same evidence fits at least as well.