Populism and President Trump’s approach to foreign policy: An analysis of tweets and rally speeches

Scholars across the social sciences have engaged in debate regarding the nature of populism and whether it is a form of political mobilisation (Jansen, 2011; Levitsky and Roberts, 2011; Weyland, 2001), a thin ideology (Mudde, 2007), or a type of discursive frame (Bonikowski and Gidron, 2016; Hawkins, 2009; Jagers and Walgrave, 2007; Poblete, 2015; Rooduijn and Pauwels, 2011). Despite important differences separating these traditions, scholars agree on some fundamental features of populist movements and leaders. At its core, populism is a type of political rhetoric predicated on the moral vilification of elites, who are seen as self-serving and undemocratic. Ultimately, populism proclaims the existence of a crisis caused by elites, seeking to challenge the dominant order and giving voice to the collective will (Moffitt, 2015; Oliver and Rahn, 2016; Pappas, 2012; Rooduijn, 2014). Regardless of their ideological preferences, populists promise to replace the existing corruption with a political order that puts the ‘people’ back at its centre and resonates with their longings and aspirations. Populists consider any claims to economic, political, or cultural privilege unfounded and a direct threat to the common wisdom of the ‘people’ (see Bonikowski and Gidron, 2016; Hawkins, 2009; Kazin, 1995; Lee, 2006; Panizza, 2005; Rooduijn, 2014; Stanley, 2008; Taggart, 2000). The ‘people’ are pure and share an identify through belonging to one nation, or ‘heartland’ (Taggart, 2000), from which minorities and immigrants are often excluded (Bonikowski, 2017; Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, 2013). In the Trump campaign, these storylines and personas tightly linked with popular culture and an anti-establishment ethos (Moon, 2020). Seen as the silent majority whose interests are overlooked in favour of arrogant economic elites, corrupt politicians and minorities (Canovan, 1999), the ‘people’ are promised a return to an imagined golden age of racial and ethnic purity, unlimited prosperity and protection from self-interested politicians (Lacatus, 2019).

This study adopts an ideational (or discourse) approach to populism, which proposes that populism is a ‘thin-centred ideology’ grounded in anti-elitism, a sense of promoting the interest of the virtuous people, and constraining a dangerous ‘other’ who is a true threat to the sovereignty of the people (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2008; Ernst et al., 2017; Mounk, 2014; Schulz et al., 2018). To ascertain whether populism exists in a particular domestic context, Muller (2016) proposes a set of necessary conditions – anti-elitism that reaches beyond simple opposition to incumbent parties; anti-pluralism that provides a credible justification of the ‘us-them’ distinction within a particular society; and the adequate socioeconomic situation with large gaps between groups. Despite discursive similarities across the political spectrum, ideology does influence the claims that populist politicians seek to advance. Right-wing populists’ view of the people often is infused with nationalism and nativism. On the right side of the ideological spectrum, populist discourse is producerist and denounces ‘out-of-control’ spending by government that would benefit ‘freeloaders’ (Lacatus, 2019; Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, 2017; Zernike, 2010), such as immigrants or members of minority communities (Michael, 2014). Providing a racialised interpretation of the people, right-wing populism is intrinsically exclusionary of cultural, religious, linguistic, and racial minorities (Judis, 2016; Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, 2017; Plattner, 2010).

Our understanding of the impact that populism has on foreign policy is more limited compared with our grasp of the consequences populist politics has at the domestic level. Most scholarship to date has focused on populist parties in Western Europe (e.g. Chryssogelos, 2010, 2011, 2017; Liang, 2007; Verbeek and Zaslove, 2017) finding that they tend to dislike the United States, globalisation and military interventions outside of Europe, with far-right populists strongly opposed to immigration, Islam and the European Union, but supporting Russia. Another key characteristic of European populists has been their foreign policy inconsistency, as shown by the Front National’s pro North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and anti-Soviet preferences during the Cold War, while cultivating sympathies with like-minded Russian politicians (Shields, 2007). Similarly, FPÖ’s support for Austria’s membership in NATO in the 1980s changed two decades later into a strong opposition towards the United States and an increased support for Russia (Meyer, 2007). A study of the anti-imperialist foreign policy rhetoric of the former Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, finds that trade and other economic issues linked to globalisation are a constant theme of populist discourse on foreign policy (Verbeek and Zaslove, 2017). In a study of India’s ‘populist foreign policy’, Plagemann and Destradi (2019) find that populism as discourse carries the most explanatory value in the procedural aspects of foreign policy-making and in its communication.

In the United States, debate about the role of populism in foreign policy has intensified as a result of the rise of the Tea Party and the election of Donald Trump (Chryssogelos, 2017). Historically, early populist movements of the 1890s were agrarian in nature and often associated with economic protectionism (Krugman, 1993) and political isolationism (Kezin, 2016), while remaining very interested in projecting ideas about popular sovereignty at home in their foreign policy (Amstutz, 2014). Motivated by a deep-seated ‘resentment of the well-bred, the well-connected, and the well-paid’ during Colonial times, this form of American populism is called ‘Jacksonianism’ (after Andrew Jackson, the president who in the 1830s used populist arguments to garner public support for a remake of the party system in the United States) and encourages distrust in the motives and methods of government fuelling revolt against the political order (Mead, 2011). Jacksonian populism has not advanced a sole political platform throughout history, but rather has endorsed different causes over the years. At certain points in history, anti-establishment populism has been a force for good generating support for political and social change for the better, as was the case with the support for universal White male suffrage in Jackson’s times and the demand for better free land leading to the Homestead Act in the 19th century or the later efforts to introduce basic legal protections for workers. At other moments in history, anti-establishment populism led to the genocidal removal of Native Americans from their traditional hunting grounds and the heavily subsidised ‘farm bubble’ that paved the way to the Great Depression (Mead, 2011).

The contemporary rise in support of the Tea Party movement is best understood as a current form of Jacksonian revolt against misguided and corrupt elites. Inside the Tea Party, two main voices dominate – on one hand, the inward-looking, neo-isolationist approach advanced by Ron Paul and his supporters and, on the other hand, the faction endorsing Sarah Palin and her stronger preference for the United States to win wars rather than withdraw completely from international conflict (Mead, 2011). Against this background of domestic preferences, arguably the most significant challenge American administrations face, is to strike the right balance between developing foreign policy strategies that are feasible and effective in the international arena while meeting Jacksonian requirements at home.

Importantly, the rise of Donald Trump is essentially motivated by his use of Jacksonian rhetoric and, as the analysis below will show, also by his broader advancement of some key ideas of the Tea Party platform. The presidential campaign of Donald Trump was marked by violence in his rhetoric at his rallies (Skocpol and Williamson, 2016), and this violence was a function of the aggressive language used to describe his opponents, the mainstream media, and international actors he perceives as hostile. This rhetorical stance continued in the first years of his presidency. Endorsing some of the main ideas proposed by the Tea Party, Donald Trump’s public discourse advances a strongly negative view of Barack Obama and his policies as well as strong opposition to ‘big government’ and a reluctance to pay taxes to help people viewed as ‘freeloaders’ – including immigrants, lower income earners, and the young (Skocpol and Williamson, 2016).

To explore the alignment of President Trump’s rhetorical stance on foreign policy, this article builds on the recent work on foreign policy and (Jacksonian) populist discourse proposing a number of necessary conditions to ascertain the influence that populism has on foreign policy in Donald Trump’s America (Table 1).

At its core, Jacksonian populism is anti-elitist. More often than not the elites are members of government and the political establishment. The Tea Party has revived Jacksonianism with a particular aversion for those perceived to belong to a liberal, well-educated, and intellectual elite (Mead, 2011). This antipathy extends also to the international sphere and the institutions that uphold liberal internationalist values, such as the promotion of liberal democracy around the world, any efforts to cooperate through multilateral organisations as well as entering and upholding international treaties. Endorsing a Hobbesian view of the international system, they view the world as a place where states always pursue their own selfish interests and have limited interest in co-operation. In this context, they endorse American exceptionalist views and harbour deep scepticism about the ability of the United States to create and uphold a liberal order (Mead, 2011). At the same time, Jacksonian populists tend to prefer aggressive militaristic responses to crises around the world, particularly against Islamic jihadism, while advocating for trade protectionism and the dismissal of costly alliances and security guarantees. In their eyes, the United States is not meant to be the police of a liberal global order, but war is a necessary response when states violate their international obligations or attack the United States.

In his communication with the electorate, Donald Trump employs a Jacksonian rhetoric in line with the position of the Tea Party. One would expect that, as president, Trump’s public discourse would be less populist and more ‘presidential’, falling in line with the rhetoric of the recognisable political mainstream. Trump’s public engagement with his electorate and the wider public at his 2018 rallies and on Twitter echoes the emphatic tone of the official campaign communication in 2016. Although he continues to make use of populist ideas to show his disdain for domestic and international liberal elites, his communication with the electorate through social media and public rallies 2 years into his presidency shows signs of a growing inconsistency between the populist campaign-style rhetoric in his communication and the Trump administration’s actions in the realm of military intervention and his views on liberal internationalism.

One of the greatest challenges of American presidents has been to gain domestic support for foreign policy initiatives (Mead, 2011). To this end, President Trump continues to present himself as a better alternative to existing politicians and to use populist rhetoric in 2018 as he did during his presidential campaign of 2016, to garner support for his actions more generally. Writ large, virulent critiques of previous administrations and Democrat politicians intersperse by acclamations of Republican politicians who have supported the Trump’s administration’s policy initiatives so far and openly laudatory remarks about the activity of the president since his inauguration. Both speeches and tweets communicate to the electorate a clear message, as printed on many rally signs: ‘Promises made; promises kept’. President Trump is a man of his word, who made promises in his electoral campaign of 2016 and has made every effort possible to keep them despite opposition by Democrats in Washington (Figure 1). In his eyes, his policies are not only very good, but in fact, they surpass the policies of previous administrations and often are simply the best America has ever seen. Importantly, his policies are the only ones motivated solely by the best interest of the American people. In all rally speeches, Trump states that economic performance is currently at an all-time high level – ‘We have the best economy in the history of our country, the best’ (Trump, 2018). According to Trump, current unemployment records are also the lowest in history, particularly in specific social groups, like women, African Americans, Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans. For instance, at a rally in Johnson City (TN) on 1 of October 2018, Trump (2016) proudly declared that ‘women’s unemployment recently reached its lowest level in 65 years’.

Figure 1. Total coded themes in rally speeches and tweets (over 50 references).

In line with far-right populist discourse, President Trump continues to critique liberal elites and to advance an exceptionalist and nativist view of America’s position in the world in his tweets and rally speeches from 2018. Trump’s official rhetoric centres on the need to immediately remedy three main areas of foreign policy concern – renegotiating existing trade agreements with principal trade partners, strengthening American’s military position in the world, and curbing illegal migration. Questioning the significance of old American commitments to create and maintain a liberal order, President Trump expresses deep scepticism and even disdain for multilateral organisations like the United Nations and NATO as well as traditional allies of the United States in their efforts to spread liberal democracy after the fall of Berlin Wall, like the European Union. In this line, President Trump believes that America’s international priorities over the years have favoured foreign interests over its own domestic interests. In other words, most transnational security agreements like NATO out the United States in the position to offer support other states while receiving little in return. Trade agreements like North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) were simply ‘bad deals’ that consistently favoured the economic success of other states by moving jobs away from the disenfranchised industrial areas of the American Midwest. The administration expects that the military security that the United States provides other countries bilaterally, through NATO or the European Union (EU), should come at a higher financial cost: ‘The countries we are defending must pay for the cost of this defence, and if not, the United States must be prepared to let these countries defend themselves’ (Trump, 2016). This places Trump’s rhetorical position in line with Jacksonian populism in as much as he advocates for a militaristic view of international security, while proposing a fundamental re-definition of international agreements and contemplating a possible future withdrawal from international treaties.

Strong nationalist ideas of promoting the good of ‘the people’ disenfranchised due to bad international trade deals, poor immigration control, and the continued threat of illegal immigration combine with a firm belief in American international exceptionalism. In his speeches, the ‘American people’ is synonymous with disenfranchised workers from the Midwest and the South, who have suffered from lower incomes and loss of employment due to globalisation, job flights, and bad trade agreements signed by previous administrations. To correct mistakes from the past, Trump has imposed new tariffs on European and Chinese goods and has entered a new continental trade agreement, the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (UMSCA), with Canada and Mexico. He cites higher employment rates to demonstrate the success of his efforts to protect the rights of workers in agriculture, manufacturing, as well as the steel and aluminium industries. To secure employment and benefits for American citizens, Trump considers border security and strict immigration controls essential. Illegal migrants are malevolent, criminals, and a direct threat to the employment and public services paid for by American workers. Domestically, Trump presents illegal immigration as a threat to the physical security of the American people, as migrants crossing the border from Mexico are often violent criminals. Once settled in the United States, they are likely to be taking jobs away from American citizens and are thus a greater threat to Americans’ job security and personal wealth. As a foreign policy concern mentioned in rally speeches (Figure 2), Trump often addresses the Mexican government and also other Central American administrations calling them to intervene with force to put an end to what he calls ‘the caravans’ of illegal immigrants consisting mostly of refugees from El Salvador and Honduras that travel through Mexico in hopes to reach the United States. Trump does not stop short of threatening to commit military force in response of illegal attempts to cross the southern border of the United States.

Figure 2. Coded themes in rally speeches (over 40 references).

In the 2016 election campaign, presidential hopeful Trump had no policymaking record to point to and was building a public image as a Washington outsider, so his rhetoric was the sole indicator of his political position and future position on foreign policy. More than 2 years after his inauguration, President Trump no longer presents himself as an outsider in Washington or in relation to the Republican or Democratic parties, but the inconsistency between his continued use of populist rhetoric on the campaign trail and his foreign policy actions regarding the use of military action is more evident. In the 2016 campaign, Trump issues strong statements against military intervention, speaking for the need to renegotiate the United States’ bi-lateral military agreements. His assertions appeared to indicate an isolationist streak and a possible move in the direction of a grand strategy of restraint, reminiscent of the Tea Party ideas endorsed by Ron Paul’s supporters. President Trump mentions repeatedly in his tweets and rallies that one does not need to intervene militarily in international conflict to be considered powerful by other states (Figures 2 and 3). Key to maintaining a global position of power is the existence of a strong military. However, his administration’s foreign policymaking is inconsistent with this line of presidential rhetoric.

Figure 3. Coded themes in tweets (over 10 references).

In Trump’s view, a significant part of the international respect that the United States is regaining under Trump’s presidency is due to the president’s efforts to strengthen the American military forces. Despite his talk of avoiding foreign entanglements during his campaigns, in practice, Trump’s administration has maintained its commitments to geopolitical competition with the world’s greatest military powers and to the formal alliances it inherited. It has maintained a strong presence in Eastern Europe as part of the European Reassurance Initiative and has continued to provide Ukraine with military equipment (Posen, 2018). In addition, Trump has announced plans to invest even more money in the Department of Defence, contributing to a budget that is already far greater than the budgets of any of United States’ military competitors. In his 2018 speeches and tweets, Trump takes particular pride in the success of its agreement with North Korea, presenting himself as hopeful of further positive developments in the efforts to freeze and ultimately stop the Asian country’s nuclear programme. By 2018, Trump’s references to the fight against terrorism, which were high on his electoral campaign agenda in 2016, diminished significantly. He mentions his administration’s achievement of withdrawing military forces from Syria and Afghanistan, but forgets to mention the intensification of American involvement in April 2017, for instance, when the US Navy launched 59 missiles in response to evidence that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons (BBC, 2017), followed by a joint attack by United States, Great Britain, and France in April 2018 (Copper et al., 2018).

In Trump’s public discourse, the economic interest of ‘the American people’ shape domestic priorities and dictate foreign policy priorities. This is largely advancing Jacksonian ideas in a contemporary setting. Bad trade deals, disadvantageous involvement in multilateral agreements and international organisations, and the lack of migration controls have led to the decline in employment in the Midwestern and the Southern parts of the United States. What set Trump apart from all other candidates to presidency in 2016 was his aggressive dismissal of liberalism and, with direct foreign policy implications, also of liberal internationalism. In his eyes, the democratic norms and multilateral institutions that support the liberal international order are fundamentally flawed due to the economic and financial imbalance they generate. By the end of 2018, Trump’s approach to foreign policy crystallised further, even if his public rhetoric of limited American intervention abroad remains consistent.

Trump views a world order that relies on a greater financial commitment and stronger military support from the United States as essentially unfair and exploitative. Trump presents such a change in international position as directly relevant to his voter base, guaranteeing increased economic prosperity and greater pride in their nation’s ability to garner international respect. Trump does not appear interested in rights promotion or the normative dimension of democracy promotion tied to foreign aid and international development efforts. In fact, he derides international financial assistance as a form of exploitation to which the United States has fallen victim due to poor foreign policy agendas of previous liberal administrations. In his public communication, his international political affinities lie primarily with far-right political figures, such as the new Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro and the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Ultimately, President Trump’s approach to foreign policy is motivated by populism in the Jacksonian tradition with strong nationalist undertones, advancing exceptionalism and a deep scepticism towards the United States’ capacity to advance a global liberal order.