Has Trump kept his promises?

Encyclopedia of Opinion

Question: Has Trump kept his promises?
Position1 of 2›: Trump has kept his promises
Argument‹2 of 3›: Trump put America first

Trump has renegotiated trade deals with other countries. He has also cut funding for international organisations to prioritise the US.

The argument

Proponents argue that "America First" was not a slogan but a testable commitment, and that the test is whether the administration actually renegotiated the terms on which the United States traded and allied. On that test, they say, the record is clear. Trump worked to renegotiate trade deals and held a harder stance with America's trading partners, accusing many of them — China and Mexico among them — of unfairly profiting from the US, and accusing other nations of taking advantage of it. The same logic was applied to alliances rather than only to commerce: he called for other members of international organisations such as NATO to meet their commitments to those organisations and not rely on the US, treating burden-sharing as a debt owed rather than a favour requested. The specific actions, proponents argue, follow directly from that premise. In 2017 Trump exited the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement to pursue American interests and protect American jobs — a withdrawal from a multilateral bargain on the reasoning that bilateral leverage serves American workers better. He renegotiated NAFTA into the United States–Mexico–Canada agreement, fulfilling his campaign promise of better deals for American workers and companies. And he took a harder line on trade with China, imposing sanctions on Chinese imports and calling for a ban on Huawei products and their 5G technology, framing the dependence itself as the problem when he vowed to "end our reliance on China". What ties these together, on this argument, is consistency of direction rather than the outcome of any single measure. Each decision accepted a cost — a forfeited agreement, a strained alliance, a disrupted supply chain — in exchange for renegotiating an arrangement he had described as disadvantageous to the US. All these measures have been Trump's work towards fulfilling his promise to put America first, which is the promise on which the question turns.

Premises

[P1]Proponents argue Trump renegotiated trade deals and took harder stances with partners like China and Mexico, and pressed NATO members to meet their commitments rather than rely on the US. [P2] He exited the Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2017, replaced NAFTA with the USMCA, and imposed sanctions and a Huawei ban to reduce reliance on China. [C] These measures show Trump worked to put America first, keeping his promise.

Counter-arguments

Putting America first is not as black and white as Trump makes it appear. By aggravating allies and leaving international organisations, Trump is alienating the US and making it harder to build mutually beneficial trade and defence relationships with other nations. This cuts off America from the rest of the world and eaves them and their allies more vulnerable. Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations, said that under Trump, “the United States has completely abandoned the notion of allies being important and abandoned the notion of international cooperation as being important".

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The premise lists actions taken, which establishes that a policy was pursued rather than that it succeeded on its own terms — and the measure the promise invited is whether American workers and firms ended up better off, which trade balances, farm support payments and manufacturing employment during the period do not straightforwardly show. [Rejecting P2] The specific claims are also weaker than stated: the USMCA retained most of NAFTA's structure, withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership left the remaining members to conclude the agreement without the United States, and the tariffs were paid by American importers — so the premises describe a change of posture rather than the outcome the conclusion claims.