The U.S. is looking increasingly isolated when it comes to its global geopolitical and trade relationships as allies reassess their ties to the world’s largest economy and consider going it alone.
The new year has seen a number of nations and power blocs forging ahead with relationship resets, closer commercial ties and trade partnerships, sidelining a more hostile and volatile U.S. They include China’s “preliminary agreement” with Canada and rapprochement with the U.K., as well as the European Union’s agreements with India and South American countries.
Those deals and negotiations come after a year of U.S. President Donald Trump’s “America First” trade and foreign policy in his second term in office, which has seen the White House hit friends and foes alike with punitive trade tariffs, and even territorial threats, as it asserts its economic and geopolitical dominance.
But that strategy could be backfiring, particularly as the U.S.′ friends and partners look to diversify their trade policies, in no small part to protect themselves from Trump’s unpredictability.
“Given what’s happening with the U.S. and its foreign policy, which was articulated in the recently released National Security Strategy ... the ‘middle powers’ need to find their own agency and figure out different approaches,” Damian Ma, director of Carnegie China, an East Asia-based research center, told CNBC on Thursday.
