[IMPORTANT: Make this 4 times longer with much more detail]
Editor’s Note Introducing Foreign Policy’s Winter 2025 Issue Perspectives on the forthcoming Trump presidency. By Ravi Agrawal , the editor in chief of Foreign Policy . The Winter 2025 FP magazine cover includes an illustration of Donald Trump holding segments of a broken rollercoaster as cars go through a loop above his head. A headline says: Trump World. Brian Stauffer illustration for Foreign Policy My FP: Follow topics and authors to get straight to what you like. Exclusively for FP subscribers. Subscribe Now | Log In United States Ravi Agrawal January 7, 2025, 12:36 AM Comment icon View Comments ( 0 ) Everyone I know seems to have a pet theory that perfectly explains why Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election. The stated reasons are familiar, from inflation and immigration to the culture wars and a global trend against incumbents. Every now and then, however, I hear a hypothesis that feels revelatory. At a recent dinner, I was seated next to a Biden administration official who attempted to explain his boss’s low approval ratings and why, ultimately, Vice President Kamala Harris lost. He told me that in his assessment, officials in the White House were so vexed by Trump’s enduring popularity and so desperate to prevent the former president from winning again that they enacted plans designed to appeal to Trump’s base. These policies included keeping in place tariffs against China even though they knew they weren’t working; allowing the United States to become more protectionist not because of a strong conviction in its merits but out of a sense that it would be popular; and calling a climate change bill the Inflation Reduction Act and directing most of its subsidies to red states. In other words, there was a degree of fear and insincerity in their policymaking, and voters inevitably saw through it—or so this official thought. In trying to please too many constituencies, perhaps, the White House disappointed everyone. Everyone I know seems to have a pet theory that perfectly explains why Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election. The stated reasons are familiar, from inflation and immigration to the culture wars and a global trend against incumbents. Every now and then, however, I hear a hypothesis that feels revelatory. An illustrated headshot of Ravi Agrawal At a recent dinner, I was seated next to a Biden administration official who attempted to explain his boss’s low approval ratings and why, ultimately, Vice President Kamala Harris lost. He told me that in his assessment, officials in the White House were so vexed by Trump’s enduring popularity and so desperate to prevent the former president from winning again that they enacted plans designed to appeal to Trump’s base. These policies included keeping in place tariffs against China even though they knew they weren’t working; allowing the United States to become more protectionist not because of a strong conviction in its merits but out of a sense that it would be popular; and calling a climate change bill the Inflation Reduction Act and directing most of its subsidies to red states. In other words, there was a degree of fear and insincerity in their policymaking, and voters inevitably saw through it—or so this official thought. In trying to please too many constituencies, perhaps, the White House disappointed everyone. President Joe Biden was keen to tell the world that the Trump years were a blip. But in the end, sandwiched between two Trump terms and no matter the merits of his policies, history will view Biden as a fuzzy interlude in an America First trajectory. For our Winter 2025 issue , we wanted to explore that theme further, examining how that happened and what Trump will mean for the world. Kicking things off, the conservative national security scholar Kori Schake lists out why Biden’s foreign policy missed the mark. While she is withering in her criticism of Trump, the central failure in Biden’s global vision, Schake writes, was “the expansive chasm between brave pronouncements and what the administration was actually willing to risk or commit to achieve its goals.” Even with Trump’s return, the ideal of an isolationist United States might not thrive for too long. The economist and former Indian central bank chief Raghuram G. Rajan says cross-border trade and migration have historically delivered far better outcomes than fragmentation. Once countries learn the true cost of erecting too many walls, he writes, they will inevitably come together again to think creatively about solving global problems. To get there, the world, and especially the West, will have to grapple with the smugness of what has been called the Professional-Managerial Class, writes FP columnist Adam Tooze . Tooze describes how U.S. scholars have focused on income and education levels to map out voters’ tendencies while failing to consider how class politics have built deep-seated resentment in society—an anger manifested in a vote for the norm-busting, name-calling Trump. One of the essays in our cover package is by yours truly. I’ve been thinking for a while about how Trump’s foreign policy is defined by his transactional approach. There’s a reflexive instinct to imagine that all countries necessarily fear a global system driven by self-interest rather than by rules. But for many rising economies—think of India or South Africa—Trump’s crude realism is a welcome change from American pieties and one they are looking forward to exploit. On that note, is Trump’s unpredictability an asset? He certainly thinks so. Like Richard Nixon before him, the president-elect is a devotee of the “madman theory” of international relations, which postulates that a crazy affect puts adversaries on the defensive. Yet history shows that presenting as volatile works better with allies than enemies, Daniel W. Drezner writes . Get ready for a wild ride: “Trump’s improbable journey from convicted felon to second-term president could convince him to take even more risks,” Drezner warns. We live in particularly interesting times, don’t we? As we start this new year, Foreign Policy will be there to make sense of it all. As ever, Ravi Agrawal Read More An illustrations shows the silhouette of Donald Trump with a face filled with pricetags. Trump Is Ushering in a More Transactional World Countries and companies with clout might thrive. The rest, not so much. Essay | Ravi Agrawal An illustration shows Joe Biden at a lecturn on a bridge spanning a chasm with two heads of Donald Trump in profile forming the base of the bridge. Why Biden’s Foreign Policy Fell Short The White House never met its own grandiose standards. Essay | Kori Schake An illustration shows a wall made up of stacked shipping containers with a line of immigrants peering up at it from below. Isolationism Won’t Make Anyone Great Again The world will come together once it realizes fragmentation makes everyone poorer. Essay | Raghuram Rajan My FP: Follow topics and authors to get straight to what you like. Exclusively for FP subscribers. Subscribe Now | Log In United States Ravi Agrawal Ravi Agrawal is the editor in chief of Foreign Policy . X: @RaviReports Read More On Donald Trump | Joe Biden | United States Join the Conversation Commenting on this and other recent articles is just one benefit of a Foreign Policy subscription. Already a subscriber? Log In . 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