President Donald Trump’s recent actions on foreign policy—from his efforts to gut a key international aid organization to his threats to impose tariffs on critical allies, to the allocation of power to a billionaire adviser—could result in a decline in the global American “soft power” that the United States has enjoyed for decades.
While the Trump administration has little control over cultural soft power—typically defined as the influence a country has without turning to coercive measures—the recent foreign policy actions taken by the president will likely have far-reaching effects on political soft power, from potentially engendering distrust among long-standing allies to propelling struggling nations to seek assistance from China rather than the U.S. This ultimately may result in diminished U.S. prestige around the world, and the enhanced standing of our geopolitical rivals.
This is not a new concern. Trump has implicitly expressed his disdain for soft power since he first took office eight years ago, with his emphasis on an “America First” foreign policy that devalues traditional alliances and abjures the notion that foreign assistance packages might have a positive sum outcome for the U.S. This ethos has been back on display since he took office a second time last month. After Trump froze foreign aid last week, an action that has already had repercussions for companies and contractors across the world, billionaire adviser Elon Musk—aided by a cadre of young engineers—began to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID. Musk announced on social media platform X that Trump “agreed” that his Department of Government Efficiency, an unofficial agency known as DOGE, should shut USAID down.
The suspension of foreign aid and the gutting of USAID will signal to allies and adversaries alike that the U.S. is “an untrustworthy actor,” said Daniel Drezner, professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
“The whole essence of soft power as a concept is that you’re doing well by doing good, and that the promotion of American values and ideals and the execution of competent policy … are seen as natural attractors for the rest of the world,” said Drezner. “We’re no longer going to look like we’re competent in policy, because we’ve disrupted this for no reason whatsoever, and we’re clearly not promoting American values anymore, at least globally.”
Soft power has been an expression of American cultural and political global hegemony since the Cold War, from the careful construction of alliances to counter other powers—primarily Russia in the previous century and primarily China in the current one—to the international proliferation of American music, fashion, and fast food. Soft power manifests itself in a variety of ways, from the substantive to the quotidian. It can come in the form of tangible material benefits, or it could simply serve to expand the aura of American values. For example, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, is a foreign aid program credited with saving more than 25 million lives, particularly on the African continent. It has expanded American soft power, but the same can be said of the presence of a McDonald’s restaurant in dozens of countries worldwide. (Trump halted disbursement of funds from PEPFAR shortly after taking office.)
Drezner argued that gutting USAID could benefit China and Russia, by convincing countries that might otherwise turn to the U.S. for assistance that Americans are unreliable. With this vacuum thus created, China has a freer hand to make the case to other countries that they are more stable partners; Russia can now argue that their conviction that the U.S. was capricious was correct all along. “Russia can make the case of, ‘See? They are what we told you they are. And are we really that much different, are we really so much worse?’” Drezner said.
If dismantling the foreign aid apparatus causes other countries to view the United States with suspicion, so too will the threat of tariffs on allies. This week, Trump delayed by 30 days plans to impose 25 percent tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico, the country’s two largest trading partners, after the countries made pledges to beef up border security. (It remains unclear whether this will result in increased deployments from these two nations or merely a continuance of pledges that had already been made.) Imposing these tariffs would be in contravention to the trade agreement Trump himself negotiated in 2018—a move that international observers would interpret as another layer of capriciousness. Tariffs on Chinese imports did go into effect on Tuesday.
Although the tariffs against our North American trade partners were postponed, they may still be instated next month; Trump has also threatened to tax imports from the European Union. Mexico and Canada have threatened to impose retaliatory tariffs on American goods, which could in turn have a negative effect on all three economies and drive up prices in the U.S. But Trump’s temporary decision to back down on the tariffs on Mexican and Canadian imports has further exacerbated uncertainty among foreign partners, said Elizabeth Saunders, political science professor at Columbia University. Not only can allies not trust that the U.S. won’t target them next, they can’t be sure Trump will actually carry out his threats.
“I think diversification away from dependence on the U.S. is going to be the name of the game,” Saunders said.
Regardless of the merits of U.S. soft power as a perceived international force for good, from an American perspective, it simply makes things “easier” when the country is viewed positively, Saunders continued. “Life is just easier when you’re not fighting with your neighbors,” she said, adding that the Trump administration’s actions over the past week are “just generating friction, uncertainty, and bad feeling.”
Even more concerning to allies than Trump’s inconsistency may be the access that Musk and his allies now have to classified information. Two top USAID officials were put on leave over the weekend after refusing to grant Musk allies access to internal systems. Katie Miller, who had been appointed to DOGE’s advisory board by Trump, confirmed on Sunday that DOGE personnel had gained access to classified information, although she claimed “no classified material was accessed without proper security clearances.”
But Saunders said that other countries may be concerned by the access that Musk and his allies in their early twenties now have to sensitive intelligence, particularly if it foretells DOGE gaining access to classified information from other, larger agencies, such as the Defense Department and the State Department.
“What would you think if you were a foreign intelligence officer right now … watching this happening? I’d be pretty concerned. And I’d be more concerned about giving 25-year-olds access to classified information at USAID even than tariffs on Canada,” Saunders said.
While Trump has demonstrated his disinterest in soft power since taking office, his pursuit of hard power—a desire to influence events through military or economic actions—is apparent. The president has expressed interest in acquiring four international territories in recent weeks: Greenland, Canada, the Panama Canal, and Gaza. Meanwhile, the Republican-controlled Congress has been largely supportive of Trump’s actions, even though efforts to shut down USAID without congressional input could be unconstitutional. Although congressional Democrats have raised concerns about the halting of USAID and the influence of DOGE, Republicans appear to have accepted Musk’s role in the administration and Trump’s actions as presidential prerogative.
That passive acquiescence may also communicate to the world that the U.S. is no longer interested in maintaining its own democratic standards, Drezner said: “You can’t just do this by executive fiat, unless, as it turns out, no one pushes back. And if no one pushes back, that is also going to send a signal to the rest of the world that, honestly, the rule of law is not all that important in the United States.”
