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foreign policy
Why Does Trump Really Hate Internationalism? It’s Bad for Billionaires
As he has thrown international rules to the side and tried to strong-arm other countries into concessions, his list of demands has resembled Wall Street’s much more than Wisconsin’s.
Jul 12, 2025
If you take U.S. President Donald Trump’s word, his foreign policy will finally make American workers great again. Where weak-willed attempts to work with other countries hollowed out the American economy, his belligerent nationalism will push the U.S. up and the rest of the world down. The globalists are for them; Donald Trump is for you!
But taking Donald Trump at his word is never a good idea. As he has thrown international rules to the side and tried to strong-arm other countries into concessions, his list of demands has resembled Wall Street’s much more than Wisconsin’s. He has fought Japan’s car safety standards and India’s price cap on coronary stents. He has gotten Canada and India to drop taxes on tech giants. And in perhaps his biggest victory, six major countries recently caved to his escalating threats and hollowed out a global plan to enforce a minimum tax on big corporations.
That Trump has fixed his ire on this international agreement reveals a broader truth: Internationalism is bad for billionaires. The misguided approach of neoliberal globalization opened up a lane for nationalists to claim that they defend the working class. But in reality, Donald Trump and his billionaire buddies would like nothing more than to play governments against each other. Billionaires can take fragmented countries to the bank—only international cooperation can build a united front strong enough to beat them.
Trump’s Revenge on the Global Corporate Minimum Tax
The global corporate minimum tax is a good example of this. (The details are a little complicated, but the super-rich would like to keep it that way, so bear with me as I explain.) In recent decades, major corporations have gotten spectacularly effective at avoiding taxes. Last year, Tesla made a profit of $2.3 billion in the U.S. but paid zero federal income tax. Neither did Merck, Pfizer, and Johnson and Johnson, despite making $45 billion around the world.
Two global dynamics help them achieve this. First, corporations use sophisticated accounting tricks to make their profits show up in countries where they do little actual business, like Ireland and the Cayman Islands—which just so happen to have very low taxes. Second, when countries attempt to raise taxes, corporations threaten to move elsewhere, creating fears of job losses and economic slowdowns that can convince governments to keep taxes low.
Trump’s global bullying successfully beat back two things he hates: international cooperation and taxing the rich.
In 2021, most of the world’s countries agreed to a tax deal that aimed to counter these dynamics. It was highly imperfect, with too many exceptions and rules skewed against developing countries, but it was still an important step forward. One of its key rules was a global minimum corporate tax of 15%. Suppose a Brazilian company paid just 10% in tax for income earned through its Swiss subsidiary. The deal would allow Brazil to apply a top-up tax and collect the remaining 5% itself. This 15% floor meant corporations could no longer drive a race to the bottom in tax rates, as any tax haven with a rate below 15% would just be leaving money on the table—someone else would tax it anyways.
And because congressional Republicans blocked the U.S. from implementing the deal—instead relying on a weaker U.S. version of the minimum tax—that’s what could have happened to American companies. This was how the agreement was supposed to work: If a country like the U.S. was too silly to make sure its companies paid at least 15% in tax, other countries would.
But Donald Trump hated the idea that countries could work together to make sure the likes of Apple, Facebook, and Eli Lilly would pay a fair share of taxes toward schools, hospitals, and roads. In an attempt to spook other countries out of making the corporate minimum tax work, Trump’s tax bill included a “revenge tax” provision that would have hiked taxes on companies from countries that applied it.
In a moment of deep cowardice, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom folded: they agreed to exempt American companies from the minimum tax in exchange for Congress removing the revenge tax provision. While the exact details are not yet clear, it is certain to give a leg up to American corporations avoiding taxes at home and abroad. It will also create a perverse incentive for foreign companies to relocate their headquarters to the U.S. in order to avoid taxes—or at least to hang that fear over countries that consider raising taxes on them. Trump’s global bullying successfully beat back two things he hates: international cooperation and taxing the rich.
Building the International “We” That Can Beat the Super-Rich
The way big corporations have played countries off each other to avoid taxes echoes a tried-and-tested strategy of advancing the interests of the rich. Corporations threaten to move investment out of countries that raise minimum wages or strengthen environmental standards. When countries reject austerity, financial markets often sell off their currency or demand higher interest rates on government bonds.
Rather than falling into this trap, some countries are demonstrating the unity needed to advance a more equitable economy. Last week, Spain, Brazil, and South Africa launched an alliance for wealth taxes on high-net-worth individuals, while eight countries took steps toward taxing first-class plane tickets and private jets. A major United Nations conference led to an initiative that could coordinate developing countries as they borrow funds, rather than leaving them isolated against their lenders.
These efforts model an internationalism different from the form of globalization that dominated the past few decades. Neoliberal globalization advanced a web of agreements that coordinated countries to place a ceiling on taxes and labor standards, not to raise the floor. Developing countries were markets to be opened, not publics to work alongside.
Corporate globalization needed to end—but the problem was that it was corporate, not that it was global. Nationalists promised to reverse this globalization and take back the spoils unjustly taken by others. But Trump has been far more successful int expanding American corporations’ ability to pillage than enabling everyday Americans to prosper. A balkanized world ensures no one is ever powerful or coordinated enough to subordinate the interest of the super-rich to the interests of the public. It doesn’t have to be that way. We can beat the super-rich, but only if that “we” is big enough to include those beyond our borders.
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Why the US Must End Its Unconditional Support for Israel
This policy has tarnished America’s image as a champion of human rights and democracy, while trapping the Middle East in a cycle of violence.
May 31, 2025
Imagine a U.S. president embarking on a lavish trip to the Middle East, signing major deals with Arab leaders—while Israel, its long-time ally, isn’t even invited to the table. This hypothetical scenario, which could easily have occurred with Donald Trump’s return to power in 2025, is a warning bell for a decades-old policy that has held America’s credibility hostage: unconditional support for Israel.
This alliance has not only stripped the U.S. of its role as a credible peace broker but has also made it complicit in human rights violations and an obstacle to democracy in the region. The time has come for the U.S. to drastically curtail its massive aid to Israel and instead invest in democratic institutions and comprehensive peace across the Middle East.
Israel: A Saboteur of Peace
Every time a genuine hope for peace has emerged in the Middle East, Israel’s actions have worked to destroy it. In the 1990s, the Oslo Accords promised Palestinian autonomy, but Israel quickly doubled down on illegal settlements in the West Bank, turning hope into despair. Between 1993 and 2000, the number of settlers grew from 110,000 to over 200,000. In 2000, the Camp David negotiations collapsed due to Israel’s insistence on retaining control over parts of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
U.S. military aid to Israel—including $12.5 billion in direct support since October 2023—has become inseparable from accusations of human rights violations.
This pattern continued. In 2005, Israel withdrew from Gaza, but instead of enabling peace, it imposed a suffocating blockade that turned the lives of 2 million Palestinians into a nightmare. Since October 2023, Israeli attacks on Gaza—backed by U.S. arms—have killed over 60,000 people, many of them civilians. These assaults, executed with 500-pound bombs supplied by the U.S., have obliterated any prospects for diplomacy. With unwavering American support, Israel has not only undermined peace but also fueled regional instability.
America’s Credibility at Risk
U.S. support for Israel—which has included $310 billion in financial aid since 1948 and 49 vetoes of United Nations resolutions critical of Israel—has disqualified Washington from being seen as a neutral mediator. When the U.S. recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 2017, Palestinians withdrew from negotiations, plunging the peace process into a deadlock. This policy has strained America’s relations with Arab countries and opened doors for China and Russia to increase their influence in the region.
Public opinion in the U.S. is also shifting. According to a Gallup poll from March 2025, only 46% of Americans support Israel—the lowest in 25 years—while 33% sympathize with Palestinians. This shift, particularly among younger generations, reflects growing dissatisfaction with a policy that undermines the very values of human rights and democracy America claims to uphold.
Human Rights and Democratic Contradictions
U.S. military aid to Israel—including $12.5 billion in direct support since October 2023—has become inseparable from accusations of human rights violations. Amnesty International and other watchdogs have accused Israel of using American-supplied weapons in attacks on civilians, in violation of the Leahy Law. Yet the U.S. has ignored these concerns and continued arms transfers.
Domestically, Israel’s policies—such as expanding illegal settlements and curbing judicial independence—clash with the principles of liberal democracy. These contradictions have damaged America’s reputation as a defender of democracy and eroded public support. A Pew survey from March 2024 found that 51% of Americans held a negative view of the Israeli government.
A Path Toward Peace and Democracy
Scaling back support for Israel could free the U.S. from this political quagmire. Reducing the $3.8 billion in annual military aid would pressure Israel to commit to a two-state solution and recognize Palestinian statehood. This shift could deter destabilizing actions like military offensives and settlement expansion, and pave the way for comprehensive peace.
Rather than continuing military expenditures, the U.S. should invest in strengthening democratic institutions in the Middle East. Supporting civil society organizations in Palestine, Jordan, and Egypt—and enhancing regional diplomacy—could lay the groundwork for lasting peace. This approach would not only restore America’s credibility as a force for peace but also aid in resolving other crises, such as nuclear negotiations with Iran. The Abraham Accords proved that multilateral diplomacy can normalize relations, but this time, Palestinians must be included.
Challenges and the Urgency of Change
Reducing support for Israel won’t be easy. Lobbying groups like AIPAC and certain U.S. lawmakers will resist. But such resistance must not deter a necessary course correction. Without change, the U.S. will remain complicit in crimes that destroy prospects for peace. A gradual, coordinated shift—aligned with Arab allies and strengthened diplomacy—can prevent regional destabilization.
Ending a Dangerous Illusion
Unconditional U.S. support for Israel, which has repeatedly sabotaged peace, is no longer defensible. This policy has tarnished America’s image as a champion of human rights and democracy, while trapping the Middle East in a cycle of violence. The time has come for the U.S. to sharply reduce aid to Israel, recognize Palestine, and invest in regional peace and democracy. This is the only path to restoring America’s global standing and ending decades of instability.
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Don’t Let Trump Toss Human Rights in the Dustbin of History
If America is to be more than a garrison state that bullies other countries and takes a what’s-in-it-for-me approach to international relations, the concept of human rights will have to be preserved and revived.
May 28, 2025
The Trump administration seems intent on undermining America’s ability to make human rights a significant element of its foreign policy. As evidence of that, consider its plan to dramatically reduce policy directives and personnel devoted to those very issues, including the dismantling of the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Rights, and Labor. Even worse, the Trump team has attacked a crucial global institution, the International Criminal Court, and put it under crippling sanctions that have ground its operations to a halt—all for telling the truth about Israel’s illegal and ongoing mass slaughter in Gaza.
The Trump administration’s assault on human rights comes against the background of years of policy decisions in Washington that too often cast aside such concerns in favor of supposedly more important “strategic” interests. The very concept of human rights has had a distinctly mixed history in American foreign policy. High points include the U.S. role in the Nuremberg prosecutions after World War II, its support for the United Nations’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, and President Jimmy Carter’s quest to be the “human rights president” in the late 1970s. But such moments have alternated with low points like this country’s Cold War era support for a series of vicious dictators in Latin America or, more recently, the way both the Biden and Trump administrations have backed Israel’s war crimes in Gaza, actions that a number of reputable independent reports suggest constitute nothing short of genocide.
The Trump administration’s position couldn’t be clearer. It seeks to permanently undermine the ability of this country to promote human rights in any form.
Amid such ups and downs have come some real accomplishments like support for the democratic evolution of the government in the Philippines, the passage of comprehensive sanctions on apartheid South Africa, and the freeing of prominent political prisoners around the world.
Some critics of the human rights paradigm argue that such issues are all too regularly weaponized against American adversaries, but largely ignored when it comes to this country’s autocratic allies like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and El Salvador. The solution to such a critique is not to abandon human rights concerns, but to implement them more consistently across the globe.
The Transactional President
In the short-term, forging a more consistent approach to supporting human rights is a daunting task. After all, the Trump administration’s position couldn’t be clearer. It seeks to permanently undermine the ability of this country to promote human rights in any form by gutting the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Rights, and Labor and making other changes that will further shift foreign policy toward the transactional and away from anything that has a hint of the aspirational. Discussions about incorporating Greenland into this country, turning Canada into our 51st state, further militarizing the U.S.-Mexico border, cutting a coercive mineral deal with Ukraine, seizing the Panama Canal, or building tourist hotels in a depopulated Gaza—however farcical some of the notions may seem—have taken precedence over any discussion of promoting democracy and human rights globally.
Donald Trump relishes building closer ties to autocrats, typically embracing Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and, at one international meeting, on seeing Egyptian leader Adel Fatah El-Sisi in the hallway, shouting, “There goes my favorite dictator!” In addition, strongmen like Nayib Armando Bukele Corteaz of El Salvador have helped enable his administration’s most egregious human rights violations to date, snatching up U.S. residents and sending them to a horrific Salvadoran prison without even a hint of due process.
The Trump administration has also proposed shuttering dozens of embassies globally and plans to slash State Department bureaus that disseminated expertise to areas plagued by crisis and war; worked to combat human trafficking; or advised the secretary of state on human rights issues relating to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Sweeping Trump administration proposals have even included replacing the Foreign Service Institute, the nation’s center for diplomatic learning, with an office devoted to “global acquisition.” Meanwhile, even as the administration dismantles America’s basic diplomatic infrastructure, it has made no moves to close a single one of America’s more than 750 overseas military bases or scale back the Pentagon’s bloated budget, which is now heading toward the trillion-dollar mark annually.
Under the Trump administration’s current approach, the face of America—already long tilted toward its massive military presence globally— is likely to be slanted even more toward military threats and away from smart diplomacy. Trump’s crew is also seeking to shut down the collection of basic data on human rights by restricting the kinds of abuses covered in State Department human rights reports. Over the years, those reports have evolved into standardized, reliable sources of information for human rights advocates and activists seeking justice in other countries, as well as political figures and journalists operating under repressive regimes.
Such objective human-rights reporting, now increasingly missing in action, had also served as an early warning system in determining which U.S. partners were more prone to engaging in reckless and destabilizing behavior that could draw this country into unnecessary and intractable conflicts.
By diluting such critical evidence-gathering mechanisms, successfully used in the past to turn other states away from violations of human rights, the administration is undermining its own future international influence. It’s also weakening critical domestic legislation meant to guarantee that this country doesn’t contribute to gross violations of such rights. While U.S. human-rights policies have at best been inconsistent in their execution, when this country has moved to protect the rights of individuals abroad, it has indeed contributed to global stability, curtailed the root causes of migration, and reduced the ability of extremist groups to gain footholds in key nations.
The Trump administration, however, has it completely backward. This country shouldn’t be treating human rights as, at best, a quaint relic of a past age. Creating a genuine policy of promoting them is not only the right thing to do, but also a potential tool for enhancing this country’s influence at a time when economic and military tools alone are anything but sufficient and often do more harm than good.
Washington’s role in enabling Israel’s destruction of Gaza brought human-rights hypocrisy front and center even before the second Trump administration. For the next nearly four years, count on this: Jettisoning human rights from U.S. policy will be the order of the day.
The American Human Rights Record Over the Last Half-Century
Jimmy Carter campaigned on a platform promoting human rights, which was seen as a breath of fresh air in the wake of the lies and crimes of President Richard Nixon’s administration at home and abroad. Under that rubric, Carter called out repressive regimes, made it easier for refugees from such countries to enter the United States, and elevated the human consequences of denying such rights above narrowly defined strategic concerns. Unfortunately, once he became president, he also abandoned his principles in key cases, most notably in his support for the Shah of Iran to the bitter end, opening the door to the rise of the Islamic extremist regime of Ayatollah Khomeini and decades of enmity between the United States and Iran.
As president, Ronald Reagan had supported democracy movements like Solidarity in Poland, while funding and arming right-wing, anti-democratic movements that he labeled “freedom fighters” in Afghanistan, Angola, and Nicaragua. The biggest human rights achievement during his two terms in office arrived despite him, not because of him, when Congress overcame his attempt to veto comprehensive sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa.
On balance, this country has all too often employed human-rights rhetoric as a justification for the use of force rather than as an actual force for democratic reform.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall and, in 1991, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, President George H.W. Bush would play an active role in the reunification of Germany, while supporting democratic transitions from communist states throughout Eastern Europe. At the same time, his administration used human rights as a tool of warfare, as when it invaded Panama to depose dictator General Noriega. At the time, that intervention was rationalized as an effort to restore democracy and protect the human rights of Panamanians. That operation, however, sparked an outcry from, among others, the U.N. General Assembly and the Organization of American States, both of which condemned the invasion as a violation of international law.
Over time, the State Department indeed expanded the range of rights it recognizes and defends—an expansion that is now under relentless attack. The Clinton administration was the first to grant asylum to gay and lesbian individuals facing persecution in their homelands. At that time, the U.S. also enacted the International Religious Freedom Act, which established an ambassador and a commission focused on protecting and promoting religious freedom internationally. Even so, that administration’s human rights record proved mixed at best. Bill Clinton himself has expressed regret over his tepid response to the Rwandan genocide and his refusal even to describe that atrocity as a genocide while in office. Still, no previous president of our times could have imagined an American asylum or immigrant policy geared only to White South Africans, as is now being implemented by the Trump administration.
The idea of humanitarian intervention—military action to prevent atrocities—has backfired in some prominent cases, causing instability and chaos, death and destruction, rather than improvements in the lives of the residents of the targeted nations. Meanwhile, the devastating American wars of this century, from Afghanistan to Iraq, caused staggering death tolls and devastation.
The 2005 Responsibility to Protect doctrine epitomized the double-edged sword of human rights rhetoric. The leading role of Barack Obama’s administration in the 2011 NATO-led “humanitarian” intervention in Libya, which was soon transformed into a destabilizing regime-change mission, marred his presidency. At the same time, Obama did help promote international rights and protections for LGBTQ+ peoples, while his administration’s work on the U.N. Human Rights Council also helped develop commissions of inquiry to investigate human rights violations in Syria, North Korea, and Muammar Qadhafi’s Libya.
On balance, this country has all too often employed human-rights rhetoric as a justification for the use of force rather than as an actual force for democratic reform. Still, as imperfect as the implementation of human rights principles has been, that’s hardly a reason for it to be abandoned outright, as seems to be happening now.
Human Rights as an Early Warning System
Regimes that engage in systematic human rights abuses domestically are also more likely to engage in reckless, destabilizing behaviors in their own regions and beyond. Such was the case with Saudi Arabia, which spearheaded a brutal invasion of Yemen that began in March 2015 and lasted for more than seven years. That war resulted in nearly 400,000 direct and indirect deaths through bombing and the devastating effects of a blockade of Yemen that slowed imports of food, medicine, and other vital humanitarian supplies. (And mind you, as is true of Israel’s ongoing horror in Gaza, that war in Yemen was carried out with billions of dollars’ worth of U.S.-supplied arms.)
The Saudi regime has never been held accountable for its campaign of slaughter in Yemen. If anything, it has been rewarded. During his recent visit, in fact, President Trump announced a $142 billion arms deal with that nation, a multi-year arms package for Riyadh that the White House described as the largest defense cooperation agreement in history. If the past is any guide, that deal could end up being considerably less than the present sum suggests, but the very existence of such a deal represents a vote of confidence in the Saudi government and its reckless de facto leader, Mohammed Bin Salman, that could get the United States entangled in another Saudi-initiated conflict.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE), which partnered with Saudi Arabia in the Yemen war, ran a series of secret prisons in that nation where its personnel and their Yemeni allies engaged in widespread torture. More recently, the UAE has been supplying weapons to rebel forces in Sudan that have committed systematic human rights abuses. And it supported opposition forces attempting to overthrow the internationally recognized government of Libya. Not only did the U.S. impose no consequences on its frequent arms client, but it declared the UAE a “major defense partner.”
Restoring Human Rights as a Policy Goal
If America is to be more than a garrison state that bullies other countries and takes a what’s-in-it-for-me approach to international relations, the concept of human rights will have to be preserved and revived in the wake of Donald Trump’s presidency.
Advocates of “hard power” should think twice before throwing U.S. human rights commitments into the dustbin of history. At a time when rights at home are under unprecedented assault, Americans need all the allies they can get if they are to help build a world grounded in responsive governance and a spirit of pragmatic cooperation. Values-based cooperation will be essential for tackling our most pressing existential crises, from climate change and pandemics to the ascendancy of arbitrary and repressive regimes.
Unfortunately, the current administration has shown no interest in speaking up on behalf of human rights, much less using them as a tool to promote more responsive governance globally.
Throwing rights overboard in pursuit of narrow economic interests and a misguided quest for global dominance will not only cause immense and unnecessary suffering but it will undermine U.S. influence around the world. The “pragmatists” who denigrate human rights in favor of a transactional approach to foreign relations are promoting a self-defeating policy that will do great harm at home and abroad. A better approach will, unfortunately, have to await a new administration, a more empathetic Congress, and a greater public understanding of the value of a foreign policy that takes human rights seriously with respect to allies and adversaries alike.
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