America First or America alone?

When the US president Trump was speaking at the World Economic Forum at Davos, he made such statement that: “America First does not mean America alone. When the United States grows so does the world.”

In the globalised world today, in most cases, countries’ economic grow rates are positively correlated with each other; this may prove Trump’s point that when the US grows so does the world. However, last century when the concept of globalisation was not commonly accepted, the economic grow rates across countries were not correlated with each other, even it is possible for us to see there were some negative correlations between certain countries. Therefore, the statement of “when the United States grows so does the world” is only correct when there is a tight corporation relationship across countries. Then this leads to the core question that when America is putting itself ahead of everything, whether the rest of the world would still like to corporate with the US or not.

To be honest, I do not think “America First” provides a very clear policy guidance. A nation’s interest is an extremely complicated issue. Firstly, it is impossible to satisfy every citizens as different citizens have different wants, no government is possible to make everyone fully satisfied. Secondly, different national interests could conflict with each other. For example, the relationship between Korea and the US is a mixture of agreements and disagreements. In terms of national security, especially when North Korean seems to have the ability to attach American territory and has nuclear power, it is mutually beneficial for both countries to have military alliance to defend the threat from North Korea. However, when the US decides to increase its tariffs on solar and washing machine, the US faces very strong opposition from South Korea. The relationships between the US and all other countries are all complicated and mixed with agreements and disagreements, it is important for the US government to find out a balance between so many different interests depending on how the government weights different interests, and different governments could weight them differently. Thirdly, there is a conflict between short term interests and long term interests. There is a fundamental problem in the West democratic system that the politicians have personal interests to make policies that have short term effects in order to win their elections, especially when the population is anxious and impatient. The population is usually anxious and impatient when there is a serious division within them, the US is currently facing such issue.

Overall, the slogan of “America First” does not provide any clear policy guidance, but definitely gives a very strong sense of selfishness. Such impression does not only damage the image of the US but also spark (extreme) nationalism and misguide policy making.