One hundred days ago, America presided over a world order it had itself crafted.
That order was designed to ensure US dominance in a global system that had offered growing prosperity, stability and security for decades.
The US economy had rebounded from the ravages of COVID-19 more effectively than any other, even if enough Americans did not yet feel the benefits to save the outgoing administration from electoral defeat.
But the US was leading the world’s economy in a tentative recovery.
Now all that is in doubt.
To his supporters, Donald Trump has used those 100 days wisely. To their minds, that much-vaunted world order ripped off America and he is rightly seeking corrective retribution.
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He has declared a trade war on much of the world. In his eccentric reading of economics, allies that America has traded with most closely have been screwing the US and must make amends.
The result of his tariff policy was a precipitous collapse in faith in America’s once all-powerful currency and the competence of its stewards.
Only an embarrassing partial volte-face averted a truly catastrophic rout on the bond markets and all that might have followed for the dollar.
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President’s unorthodox approach
Taking aim at phantom threats, say his critics, this president has instead holed both feet with a barrage of bullets.
Trump’s diplomacy and use of American power have been equally unorthodox.
He seems to believe in a natural order of things. The strong dominate. The weak accept their fate. He has talked of taking control of Greenland and Panama as if it were US destiny and absorbing Canada as America’s 51st state.
He has embraced Russian strongman Vladimir Putin’s narrative for invading Ukraine and blamed the war instead on President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Trump has horrified allies
He has ordered his diplomats to vote with Moscow at the UN and horrified allies by publicly bullying the Ukrainian leader in the Oval Office, aided and abetted by his vice president JD Vance.
The peace plan he has offered is so one-sided it could have been written in the Kremlin. Ukrainians say it proposes extorting much of their mineral wealth and demands the surrender of much of the land taken in the most egregious act of aggression on European soil since World War Two.
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More broadly, allies have been put on notice that the US will be retreating from its decades-long role as guarantor of international security and prosperity in Europe at least.
As America puts itself first, so other nations are being urged to do the same.
Critics say this will lead to a world of fortress nations erecting defences in place of decades of cooperation promoting peace and prosperity. That will only increase the risk of discord and conflict.
Ironically, America has been enriched and empowered by decades of a world order they call the Pax Americana, not impoverished by it, but Trump’s radical prescription is already threatening Americans with rising prices and empty shelves.
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Tool of soft power discarded
America under Donald Trump is also discarding one of its greatest tools of soft power abroad. It has dismantled US aid, leaving the health of tens of millions in jeopardy and a vacuum that China is only too eager to fill.
Also damaging America’s prestige and standing in the world is its president’s very un-American assault on democracy and freedom at home: his attacks on judges, use of executive power to target rivals and critics wherever he finds them, in academia, in the media and in corporations and law firms.
And then there is his extrajudicial deportation of US citizens or ‘homegrowns’ as he calls them, to a central American gulag run by a government with an appalling human rights record.
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US ‘no longer reliable partner’
America’s claim to offer moral leadership has been tarnished by this administration.
It is no longer seen as a reliable partner by allies and they are stating so more and more publicly.
Some hope President Trump will soften his approach as his policies encounter controversy and threaten his popularity as he has already with tariffs.
However, he has shown a greater determination and radicalism than in his first term in office.
Allies will remain engaged, hoping to moderate and influence this president’s foreign policy but in a hundred days, the world and America has changed under Donald Trump and in many ways irreversibly.
