For all his successes, American soft power seems to ebb by the day. For nearly 100 years, US might has been multiplied by alliances and its leadership of like-minded democratic market economies.
But “America First” policies are complicating a longtime foreign policy goal of Republican and Democratic administrations to draw China’s foe, Vietnam into Washington’s orbit, notwithstanding a trade framework that Trump signed with the Hanoi government. Trump’s trade assault on India has had a similar effect. His former friend Prime Minister Narendra Modi is warming to US adversaries China and Russia following Trump’s imposition of high tariffs.
Even Canada is going its own way and courting US competitors after years of massive trade across the 49th Parallel. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney strikingly warned last week that “many of our former strengths as a country … based on close ties to America, have become our vulnerabilities.”
