"America First" Puts Americans LastHow Trump’s War on Multilateralism Is Making the U.S. Weaker, Poorer, and Less Secure
U.S. President Donald Trump is tearing down the architecture of global governance. What we are witnessing is not merely a change in American policy but an unraveling of multilateralism. This is nothing less than the deliberate dismantling of the postwar order. Exit America: Withdrawal from Global AgreementsAn early 2025 U.S. presidential memorandum signaled Trump’s retreat from multilateral engagement. In 2026, Washington pulled the United States out of 66 international organizations. Even before the formal withdrawals, the Trump administration had already begun hollowing out funding for numerous global organizations. Trump cut $1 billion in UN-related funding and terminated one thousand U.S. government personnel connected to UN operations. The U.S. has withdrawn from the United Nations Human Rights Council and UNESCO, and severed ties with the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, the World Health Organization, and the Global Counter-Terrorism Forum. The administration is also destabilizing core pillars of the Western security architecture. It is openly undermining NATO—the world’s most consequential military alliance—publicly berating allies and casting doubt on the credibility of U.S. collective defense commitments. At the same time, it has clashed with key transnational forums such as the International Energy Agency, the G7, and the G20, while withdrawing from institutions devoted to development, labor protections, migration governance, diversity initiatives, and conflict prevention. “By unraveling trust and dismantling the global order, Trump is removing the very mechanisms that could constrain his agenda and threaten his bid for unilateral control.” As summarized by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, “Multilateral institutions are under assault on many fronts, and international cooperation is eroding.” Guterres warned that even the founding principles of the UN—including the equality of member states—are under threat. Ending Climate CooperationAmerica has abandoned global climate governance. On the first day of his second term in 2025, Trump officially pulled the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement for a second time, having first withdrawn in 2020 during his initial term. In 2025, the Trump administration blocked U.S. scientists from attending the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) meetings in China and barred them from contributing to upcoming reports. For the first time, the United States sent no delegation to the annual UN climate summit, COP30 in Belem, Brazil. In early 2026, the administration formally withdrew from core science-based climate institutions, including the IPCC and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), alongside dozens of other climate-focused bodies. “For decades, global institutions amplified American power and maintained international stability. Undermining rules, norms, and alliances relinquishes leverage and cedes control to rivals. By rejecting multilateral cooperation in favor of unchecked autonomy, the United States has traded agenda-setting power and strategic credibility for an anachronistic 19th-century version of coercive imperialism.” Trump has effectively isolated advocates of climate action and influenced national policy agendas. European countries have scaled back their net-zero emissions pledges, Canada has been compelled to retreat on certain environmental action plans, and even philanthropists such as Bill Gates are pulling back from climate finance. The Trump administration has also withdrawn from organizations focused on clean energy (e.g., Solar Alliance). This has had a chilling effect on private-sector climate initiatives, including discouraging investment and innovation in cleantech. According to PitchBook data compiled for Axios, venture capital investments in climate deals have dropped nearly 50 percent since their high of 2021. Corporate greenhushing is on the rise, and even major automakers like Ford are hitting the brakes on EV development. Shattering MultilateralismThe Trump administration is not merely withdrawing from global agreements and disengaging from multilateralism; it is willfully destroying the architecture of collaborative governance—systematically weakening the institutions, norms, and partnerships that structure international cooperation. This assault on the multilateral order is strategic. By undermining key climate agreements, like COP30 and the Global Plastics Treaty, and by threatening negotiators of the UN High Seas Treaty, the administration has exposed a pattern of systemic disruption—eroding alliance cohesion, fragmenting policy coordination, and dismantling collaborative mechanisms. The Trump administration has openly targeted the United Nations, warning it to “adapt, shrink, or die” while signaling that countries receiving UN assistance will be subject to U.S. demands. Trump has even proposed supplanting the UN with his so-called “Board of Peace” to control development in the Palestinian territories following Israel’s war in Gaza, going so far as to claim that this body would “oversee” the UN itself. “By gutting national security, eroding U.S. soft power, and squandering the credibility of a once-trusted global leader, ‘America First’ ultimately undermines the interests of those it claims to serve.” Trump’s embrace of power politics is reshaping global relations. Other nations are following suit and replacing cooperative norms with transactional leverage. Even in Europe, the shift is clear: the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and the collapse of COP30 have prompted EU diplomats to rethink climate diplomacy, with top officials now advocating for a more transactional approach. No one has done a better job of articulating the reality of the present moment than Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. Speaking in Davos, Carney explained, “the multilateral institutions on which middle powers have long relied — including the WTO, the UN, and the COP process — and indeed the very architecture of collective problem-solving itself, are now under threat.” Dismantling the Global OrderTrump is assaulting the structures of governance that sustain the global order. He is dismantling the international institutions the U.S. has been building since 1945. Jan Bremmer, president and founder of Eurasia Group, a leading global political-risk consultancy, warned: ‘The United States is itself unwinding its own global order…The world’s most powerful country is in the throes of a political revolution. In our lifetimes, we have never witnessed an American president so committed to—and so capable of—changing the political system and, accordingly, the United States’ role in the world.” Before leaving for the 2026 Munich Security Summit, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared, “The old world is gone,” a sentiment echoed by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who added, “The international order based on rights and rules is in the process of being destroyed.” During his Senate confirmation hearing in 2025, Rubio made it clear that the Trump administration wanted to end what he called the “obsolete” rules-based international order. The Washington then proceeded to explicitly communicate their intent to end the postwar order in a national security strategy document. As Carney said, “the rules-based order is fading, that the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must.” The UN chief described Trump’s “brazen violation of international law” as one of the biggest challenges facing the global order. Burning Bridges: No Turning BackIt would be easy to write off Trump’s destructive behavior as the antics of a narcissist and an intellectual lightweight. While there may be more than a modicum of truth to this conclusion, there is also method to his madness. Burning bridges is part of a scorched-earth strategy to ensure that there can be no retreat. Much of the damage Trump has done is irreversible. As European President, Ursula von der Leyen, explained, “Some lines have been crossed that cannot be uncrossed anymore.” And Merz elaborated, “a deep divide has opened between Europe and the United States”. Carney bluntly described the current situation as “a rupture, not a transition,” adding, “the old order is not coming back.” Trump’s actions are intended to have an enduring impact. General Sir Richard Barrons, Senior Consulting Fellow at Chatham House, said the liberal democratic world order is “all gone now,” and he adds, “it would be wrong to see this as an aberration or a blip and were going back to how we were.” At the Munich Security Conference, California Governor Gavin Newsom said the leaders he spoke to think the damage Trump has done to the transatlantic alliance is irrevocable. Trump’s Tariff war, disparaging NATO, and threats to take Greenland by force are deliberately disruptive. Trump is willfully making enemies of America’s allies and befriending its foes. By burning bridges, Trump is cutting the US off from the rest of the world. In a recent speech, von der Leyen referred to the “increasingly lawless world” Trump has created. “The shift in the international order is not only seismic – but it is permanent. And the sheer speed of change far outstrips anything we have seen in decades. We now live in a world defined by raw power – whether economic or military, technological or geopolitical.” The Myopic Logic of ‘America First’Trump’s “America First” agenda wields raw, unrestrained power to shred global consensus and ignore U.S. obligations to the world. Multilateralism, cooperation, and international law are dismissed as ineffective, costly, or “woke”. Collaboration is cast as a liability, that is “now being used against us,” as Rubio bluntly put it. “‘America First’ is a slogan that doesn’t protect Americans — it makes them poorer, less secure, and more isolated.” By unraveling trust and dismantling the global order, Trump is removing the very mechanisms that could constrain his agenda and threaten his bid for unilateral control. For “America First” to succeed, global cooperation must fail. At its heart, “America First” is less a policy than a doctrine of absolute U.S. sovereignty at all costs. The goal of the administration is to ensure that the U.S. is not restricted by international laws or rules. This is a double standard of colossal proportions. While the United States actively undermines the sovereignty of other nations, it righteously protects a maximalist interpretation of its own sovereignty. “America First” is not merely about disengaging—it is about dismantling the very frameworks through which it once projected influence. For decades, global institutions amplified American power and maintained international stability. Undermining rules, norms, and alliances relinquishes leverage and cedes control to rivals. By rejecting multilateral cooperation in favor of unchecked autonomy, the United States has traded agenda-setting power and strategic credibility for an anachronistic 19th-century imperialism. In the 21st century, influence extends beyond the projection of hard power; it requires engagement and cooperation. Simply put, Americans are less safe without international law and global agreements. Legal frameworks and multilateral institutions constrain aggression, manage disputes, coordinate responses to shared threats, and create predictability in international relations. When those guardrails erode, states rely more heavily on coercion, unilateral action, and military or economic leverage. This increases the risk of conflict, weakens collective responses to transnational challenges like climate change and pandemics, and leaves smaller nations vulnerable to domination by stronger powers. In the absence of shared rules, mistrust grows, deterrence becomes unstable, and crises escalate more easily. “America First” is a slogan that doesn’t protect Americans — it makes them poorer, less secure, and more isolated. It isn’t strengthening the country; it is weakening the people who live in it. Trump First Americans LastBy gutting national security, eroding U.S. soft power, and squandering the credibility of a once-trusted global leader, “America First” ultimately undermines the interests of those it claims to serve. The Trump administration is prioritizing the enrichment of a handful of elites while making life more expensive for ordinary Americans. Simon Stiell, the UN’s climate chief, warned that Americans are bearing the brunt of Trump’s abandonment of global cooperation. “It is a colossal own goal which will leave the US less secure and less prosperous,” he said. “It will mean less affordable energy, food, transport, and insurance for American households and businesses.” The administration’s policies are causing immense harm in the U.S. and around the world. The reduction of American support for global health funding alone is expected to cause millions of additional deaths by 2030. From the perspective of everyday Americans, the central concern is affordability—and over 80 percent say Trump’s agenda does not serve them. Rather than addressing the economy, inflation, the rising national debt, and the growing gulf between rich and poor, Trump is focused on building monuments to himself and ushering in a second Gilded Age. The beneficiaries of “America First” are not working families struggling with affordability—they are a small circle of oligarchs and, of course, Trump himself. These are people who thrive on deregulation, weakened oversight, and corruption. Average Americans are paying the price as Trump lines his pockets and consolidates his power. Trump is wreaking havoc on the world—and on American interests. Washington’s retreat from multilateralism and attacks on the world order make the U.S. weaker, Americans poorer, and the world less secure. Next: How Trump’s Power Politics Expose the Rules-Based Order as a Sham Look past the noise and into the power dynamics shaping our future. Subscribe for the full story delivered to your inbox
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Wednesday, 4 March 2026
"America First" Puts Americans Last
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