Trump Day One

America First, Or, we are not in Kansas anymore

The new US President issued a slew of executive orders on his first day in office (Canada was spared tariffs for the moment…). Most dealt with domestic issues, including overturning a boatload of Biden era policies.

Among the briefest and most vaporous was the “America First Policy Directive to the Secretary of State.”^[1] Incidentally, Marco Rubio has been confirmed as Trump’s first cabinet appointment as Secretary of State.^[2] So the EO landed on his desk.

Its essentially a one-liner:

“From this day forward, the foreign policy of the United States shall champion core American interests and always put America and American citizens first.” ^[3]

So begins a new and dangerous era in US foreign policy, steeped in isolationism, potentially threatening the entire structure of international institutions built since 1945, disregarding the need to sustain a “rules-based international order,” disinterested in defending democracy globally, certainly threatening the interests of allies such as Canada.

One can only look back with a degree of nostalgia on the doctrine that launched the US into a role as peacetime leader after 1945. The Truman doctrine (1947) read: ^[4]

“One of the primary objectives of the foreign policy of the United States is the creation of conditions in which we and other nations will be able to work out a way of life free from coercion. This was a fundamental issue in the war with Germany and Japan. Our victory was won over countries which sought to impose their will, and their way of life, upon other nations.

To ensure the peaceful development of nations, free from coercion, the United States has taken a leading part in establishing the United Nations, The United Nations is designed to make possible lasting freedom and independence for all its members. We shall not realize our objectives, however, unless we are willing to help free peoples to maintain their free institutions and their national integrity against aggressive movements that seek to impose upon them totalitarian regimes. This is no more than a frank recognition that totalitarian regimes imposed on free peoples, by direct or indirect aggression, undermine the foundations of international peace and hence the security of the United States.

The peoples of a number of countries of the world have recently had totalitarian regimes forced upon them against their will. The Government of the United States has made frequent protests against coercion and intimidation, in violation of the Yalta agreement, in Poland, Rumania, and Bulgaria. I must also state that in a number of other countries there have been similar developments.

At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one.

One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression.

The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio; fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms.

I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.

I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.

I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes.

The world is not static, and the status quo is not sacred. But we cannot allow changes in the status quo in violation of the Charter of the United Nations by such methods as coercion, or by such subterfuges as political infiltration. In helping free and independent nations to maintain their freedom, the United States will be giving effect to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.”

There are ideas in the Truman Doctrine now banished in America First: support for democracy and ensuring a world free from coercion; upholding the United Nations; helping to create peaceful development; providing the nations of the world with economic and financial aid. The very premise of the Truman Doctrine was a handover of leadership from a victorious but struggling United Kingdom, unable to shoulder the burden, to a new global power, the United States. This was to be the United States’ new ‘manifest destiny.’

We are not in Kansas anymore.

(OK, I know Truman was born in Missouri, but close enough)

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^[1] Executive Order, “America First Policy Directive to the Secretary of State,” January 20, 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/america-first-policy-directive-to-the-secretary-of-state/

^[2] https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/20/politics/rubio-secretary-state-senate-confirmed-dg/index.html

^[3] Executive Order, “America First Policy Directive to the Secretary of State,” January 20, 2025,

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/america-first-policy-directive-to-the-secretary-of-state/

^[4] The Truman Doctrine (speech to Congress), https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/truman-doctrine