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Undermining America from Within? [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-06-08
How Trump-Era Policies Have Advanced the Goals of U.S. Adversaries—From 2016 to Today
From the moment Donald Trump descended the escalator in 2015 and declared his candidacy, a pattern began to emerge—one that would continue throughout his presidency and persist long after. It is a pattern of policy decisions, public statements, and strategic retreats that, intentionally or not, consistently benefited America’s adversaries, especially Vladimir Putin's Russia, Xi Jinping's China, and other authoritarian regimes.
This is not simply the story of an unconventional populist disrupting the status quo. It is the story of a man whose foreign policy posture, economic nationalism, and disdain for alliances have aligned, again and again, with the long-standing goals of America’s enemies—weakening NATO, destabilizing Western alliances, retreating from global leadership, and fostering internal division.
In fact, some of these trends began before Trump was even elected, including:
⁃ Trump Tower Moscow negotiations, ongoing during the 2016 campaign, suggesting deep personal and financial interests in Russia .
⁃ The 2016 Republican platform being softened on Ukraine—reportedly at Trump’s request .
⁃ Trump’s repeated public praise for Putin, even as Russia was actively interfering in U.S. elections .
⁃ The appointment of Paul Manafort, a man later convicted of sharing internal polling data with a Russian intelligence associate .
Since then, through his presidency and into the post-presidency campaign for re-election, the pattern continues. Trump’s statements and proposals in 2024–2025 reveal that his alignment with foreign adversaries was not an aberration of his first term—it is a strategic throughline.
I. Foreign Affairs: Limiting U.S. Global Influence
1. Abandoning International Agreements
⁃ Paris Climate Accord Withdrawal (2017): Ceded environmental leadership to China and the EU.
⁃ Iran Nuclear Deal Withdrawal (2018): Alienated European allies and emboldened Iran.
⁃ Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Exit (2017): Undermined U.S. influence in Asia, clearing the path for China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Implication: Each withdrawal weakened U.S. influence while directly serving the geopolitical interests of China, Russia, or Iran.
2. Targeting Alliances and Multilateralism
⁃ NATO Undermining (2017–2020, and 2024–2025 campaign rhetoric):
⁃ Trump repeatedly questioned the value of NATO and implied the U.S. might not defend members under Article 5.
⁃ In 2024, he declared that Russia could do “whatever the hell it wants” to NATO members who don’t pay enough, alarming allies .
⁃ WHO Withdrawal During COVID (2020): Abandoned global cooperation in the middle of a pandemic, giving China a leadership vacuum to fill.
⁃ Defunding UN agencies: Cut U.S. contributions to institutions essential for American soft power and global stability.
Strategic Outcome: These actions systematically dismantled America’s international credibility—and helped fulfill Putin’s decades-long goal of a fractured Western alliance system.
3. Foreign Aid Sabotage
⁃ Proposed elimination or slashing of USAID (2017–2020): Attempted repeatedly to gut the U.S. agency responsible for stabilizing developing regions and promoting American values abroad.
⁃ Ukraine Military Aid Scandal (2019): Withheld Congressionally approved military aid to pressure Ukraine into investigating political rivals—an act that directly benefited Russian interests in Eastern Europe.
⁃ Ongoing 2024–2025 calls to end "foreign giveaways": Trump’s campaign has renewed threats to gut foreign aid, framing it as waste, while ignoring the geopolitical leverage it provides.
Inference: Weakening Ukraine and disengaging from developing regions is a longstanding strategy of Moscow and Beijing. Trump’s behavior—past and present—ech
oes their desired outcomes.
II. Economic Competitiveness: Self-Inflicted Wounds
1. Destructive Tariff Policies
⁃ Steel & aluminum tariffs on allies (2018): Canada, the EU, and Japan were targeted under dubious national security justifications, provoking retaliation.
⁃ China Trade War (2018–2020): Disrupted supply chains and hurt U.S. exporters, without delivering meaningful gains on IP theft or market access.
⁃ 2024–2025 proposals: Trump has proposed across-the-board 10% tariffs on all imports and 60% or more on Chinese goods, which economists warn could spark a global trade war and a recession .
Benefit to Rivals: These moves isolate the U.S. from global trade systems, cede leadership to China, and fracture cooperation among allies.
2. Undermining Legal & Institutional Stability
⁃ Blocking WTO Appointments (2019–2020): Paralyzed the global trade court system, reducing U.S. options for enforcing trade rules.
⁃ 2025 rhetoric suggests total WTO exit: Trump has hinted at withdrawing completely from the World Trade Organization, a move China would exploit to write its own rules in global trade.
Effect: This reduces the U.S. role as a rule-setter and emboldens authoritarian models of state capitalism.
3. Attacks on Immigration and Talent Pipelines
⁃ Cuts to H1-B and other skilled visa programs (2017–2020): Reduced the flow of STEM talent.
⁃ Ongoing 2024 anti-immigration platform: Calls for mass deportations, end of birthright citizenship, and bans on immigration from certain countries—all of which deter high-skilled migrants from seeing the U.S. as a welcoming destination.
Result: America loses its edge in innovation while competitors like Canada and Germany attract disillusioned talent.
4. Attacks on Foreign Students and Academic Research
In recent speeches and proposals (2024–2025), Trump has intensified his earlier hostility toward foreign students in U.S. universities, especially those from China, India, Iran, and the Middle East. He frames these students as "security threats" and has proposed:
Visa bans or restrictions for students from "adversarial nations"
Limits on foreign nationals in STEM research programs
Threats to withdraw federal research funding from institutions employing researchers from flagged countries
“We shouldn’t be training our enemies to outsmart us,” Trump said in March 2024. “Our money should go to patriotic colleges that agree.”
These measures seriously damage America’s scientific edge:
Over 70% of full-time grad students in key tech fields like electrical engineering and computer science are international.
Many stay post-graduation, driving innovation, founding companies, and leading labs.
Excluding them creates a vacuum that China, the EU, and others are eager to fill.
Shutting out global talent isolates the U.S. from research networks, weakens soft power, and accelerates the shift of tech leadership to rivals.
Srategically, these actions offer no real gain. Intelligence agencies report little abuse of student visas, and most foreign students pay full tuition, supporting both schools and local economies.
The real beneficiaries are adversaries like China and Russia, who welcome displaced talent and expand their own research sectors. America, by contrast, risks falling behind.
⚠️ This invites suspicion: Are these policies organically American, or the product of disinformation or influence campaigns by hostile powers? Whether witting or not, the alignment with adversarial goals is striking.
Turning away the world’s best minds isn’t patriotic—it’s a gift to our enemies.
III. Suspicions of Foreign Influence: Smoke, Fire, and Alignments
While direct evidence of foreign authorship is scarce, circumstantial evidence abounds:
⁃ Trump Tower Moscow deal, pursued deep into the 2016 campaign, with Michael Cohen lying to Congress about its scope .
⁃ Manafort’s sharing of campaign data with a Russian operative .
⁃ The 2016 platform shift on Ukraine .
⁃ Ongoing praise of Putin during and after Trump’s presidency, including justifications of Russia's invasion of Ukraine .
These are not isolated incidents. They form a mosaic that strongly suggests foreign actors may have influenced U.S. decision-making through financial entanglements, disinformation, or ideological symbiosis. 
IV. Conclusion: Was It Just Incompetence—or Something More?
Authoritarian regimes don’t always need to plant agents or wage war. Sometimes, they just need to influence the influencers, reward the loyal, and nudge a superpower toward self-destruction.
Whether through ignorance, hubris, or corruption, Trump’s policies—from his campaign origins to his 2025 platform—have repeatedly aligned with the strategic interests of America’s adversaries.
The pattern is too consistent, too convenient, and too damaging to dismiss as mere coincidence.
[END]
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