When President Donald Trump returned to the White House, critics expressed concerns that his “America First” policies would mean “America Alone” again.
He withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement and the World Health Organization, demanded that NATO allies spend more on their defense, and dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development.
But nine months into his second administration, Trump is now being criticized for focusing too much on foreign policy at the expense of his domestic policy, including cost-of-living and affordability issues that were central to this week’s off-year elections.
“Trump has been spending a lot of time on foreign policy and not as much time on domestic policy,” Republican strategist John Feehery told the Washington Examiner. “That typically is what happens in the second term for a president, but it has an impact. People don’t really give a s*** what’s going on in Europe. They care what’s happening in the backyard. And the president needs to mind that as he’s thinking of the midterms.”
Former White House chief political strategist Steve Bannon predicted similar criticism, advising Trump in an interview with Politico to “give more speeches and [do] more things domestically, maybe take a few less international trips for the next six months or so, and just get focused back with the American people.”
Trump is not the first second-term president to be criticized for focusing on foreign policy as he appears more cognizant of his legacy. But the scale of intervention abroad, in many different forms, has been surprising.
Just this week, the administration announced it would provide $24 million to Jamaica, Haiti, the Bahamas, and Cuba after those countries were hit by Category 5 Hurricane Melissa last week.
In the Middle East, he has played a starring role in negotiating peace between Israel and Hamas. That followed an unprecedented strike in June on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Trump has additionally underscored his pursuit of peace and the Nobel Peace Prize, helping to negotiate peace deals between Israel and Iran, Pakistan and India, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Thailand and Cambodia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Egypt and Ethiopia, and Serbia and Kosovo. That’s not to mention his pursuit of resolving the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
All of that takes place as his administration engages in trade wars with countries including China, India, Brazil, and even Switzerland.
Trump, too, consented last month to a $20 billion currency swap with Argentina after a lack of confidence in Argentine President Javier Milei’s leadership prompted investors to dump stocks and bonds in his country. Following Trump’s intervention, Milei triumphed in legislative elections.
At the same time, Trump has been more assertive toward the likes of Venezuela, South Africa, and even Nigeria.
Regarding Venezuela, Trump has angered Congress by conducting strikes against alleged drug-running boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean without congressional approval, while also indicating last weekend that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s days may be numbered. Trump this week also confirmed that he will not be representing the U.S. at this month’s Group of 20 leaders summit in South Africa in protest of the country’s land expropriation law, which he has repeatedly criticized for discriminating against white Afrikaners. His interest in the African continent extended to Nigeria last week when he threatened to “go into that now-disgraced country … guns-a-blazing” in response to reports of Christian persecutions and other religious freedom infringements by Nigerian Islamist militant groups.
Trump “has successfully restored America First foreign policy while simultaneously maintaining our country’s status as the most generous in the world,” according to the White House.
“Instead of bureaucrats doling out blank checks, all international assistance is distributed strategically and in line with the agenda that people voted for,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly told the Washington Examiner. “The president is simultaneously negotiating fairer trade deals, securing a 5% defense spending pledge among NATO allies, killing narcoterrorists smuggling illicit narcotics into our homeland, and more while ending eight wars — making the entire world safer and more stable.”
A White House official told the Washington Examiner that Trump “has a humanitarian heart” but that he “is prioritizing trade over aid, opportunity over dependency, and investment over assistance.”
“As part of the America First Global Health Strategy, the State Department is negotiating bilateral agreements that will ensure 100% of front-line commodities and healthcare workers delivering these commodities continue to be funded,” the source said. “These MOUs will ensure each partner country has data systems in place that can both monitor potential outbreaks and broader health outcomes as we work towards self-reliance. This includes our partnership with American company Gilead, which supports global HIV/AIDS prevention in addition to domestic investments and innovation.”
Republican strategist Cesar Conda said the criticism of Trump’s focus on foreign policy is “misplaced,” contending that the president “has been making fantastic trade deals with other countries that will bring billions of dollars of job-creating investment to the United States.”
“The eight peace deals he has negotiated between warring nations and factions will have the side benefit of bringing global economic stability, which means expanded markets for American-made goods and services,” Conda told the Washington Examiner.
However, Conda, the first chief of staff to Secretary of State Marco Rubio when he was in the Senate, acknowledged Trump and congressional Republicans “must turn to the home front to re-focus on affordability and cost-of-living issues.”
“They must pass a second reconciliation bill, which includes tax cuts that put money directly into people’s pockets,” the founding partner of Republican lobbying firm Navigators Global told the Washington Examiner. “They must advance policies to address the high cost of groceries, housing, and electricity. They have a window to fix these cost-of-living issues before next year’s midterms … but it’s a narrow one.”
That understanding has not been lost on Trump, the White House, and his outside allies, although Trump this week only conceded an economic messaging problem, not a policy one.
“We have the greatest economy right now, a lot of people don’t see that,” he told the America Business Forum on Wednesday in Miami. “These are things you have to talk about. It doesn’t just happen. It’s wonderful to do them, but if people don’t talk about them, then you can do not so well in elections.”
Vice President JD Vance agreed “we need to focus on the home front,” though he also argued that it is “idiotic to overreact to a couple of elections in blue states” and “infighting is stupid.”
“The president has done a lot that has already paid off in lower interest rates and lower inflation, but we inherited a disaster from Joe Biden and Rome wasn’t built in a day,” Vance wrote on social media. “We’re going to keep on working to make a decent life affordable in this country, and that’s the metric by which we’ll ultimately be judged in 2026 and beyond.”
Meanwhile, criticism of Trump’s focus on foreign policy struck Rutgers University historian David Greenberg “as a short-term issue” after Democrats won this week’s off-year elections in New Jersey and Virginia, in addition to New York City’s mayoral race, with campaigns, in part, about the cost of living and affordability.
“The Democrats’ success has more to do with the off-year timing of the elections and their location in blue-leaning places,” Greenberg told the Washington Examiner. “History shows that there are always short-term fluctuations in a president’s approval, depending on which issues are salient, but unless they rise to the level of lasting significance, they don’t affect the results of elections that are a year or more away.”
To that end, Trump’s average general approval is net negative 11 percentage points, his economic policy approval is net negative 13 points, and his foreign policy approval is net negative 10 points, per RealClearPolitics. That same polling aggregator also has Democrats with an average early 4-point edge over Republicans on a generic congressional ballot before next year’s midterm elections.
Simultaneously, 40% of respondents to this week’s Economist and YouGov tracking poll reported that their most important issue is inflation and prices or jobs and the economy. Another 12% told pollsters healthcare, and 8% said immigration. Only 2% said foreign policy.
TRUMP’S POST-ELECTION DIAGNOSIS RISKS NOT SEEING THE FOREST FOR THE TREES
Regardless, Ronald Reagan biographer and former Republican strategist Craig Shirley concluded that “all presidents get criticized for one or the other.”
“The days of partisanship ending at the nation’s shore are long over,” Shirley told the Washington Examiner. “We are so polarized now that to get anything done, one party needs to be in total control, and sometimes even that is not enough, a la the current government shutdown, which is going to leave a mark.”