Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is Andrew Ross Sorkin, the founder of Dealbook. Every year, I interview some of the world's most influential leaders across politics, culture, and business at the Dealbook Summit, a live event in New York City. On this year's podcast, you'll hear my unfiltered conversations with Gavin Newsom, the CEO of Palantir and Anthropic, and Erica Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk.
Listen to Dealbook Summit wherever you get your podcasts.
Chapter 2: What aggressive foreign policy actions has President Trump taken?
From The New York Times, I'm Natalie Kitro-Eff. This is The Daily. From slamming Europe and abandoning our commitments to our closest allies there to carrying out a lethal U.S. military campaign in the Caribbean, President Trump has overseen an aggressive foreign policy that hasn't always been easy to understand.
But the White House has now unveiled a national security strategy that offers a justification for those actions, laying bare Trump's true goals and alarming countries around the world. Today, my colleague David Sanger explains what the strategy actually is and how the emerging Trump doctrine it represents may change America's global relationships for good. It's Friday, December 12th.
David, our resident foreign policy expert, it's great to have you here.
Natalie, always great to be with you.
There has been a lot of debate on the right, among voters, about Trump's focus on international affairs, a notion that he's not following through on his stated agenda of putting America and Americans first. And it's true that Trump in his second term has been extremely active around the world. He's been engaging in a trade war with China.
He's bombed Iran's nuclear facility, brokered a ceasefire in Gaza. There's been the recent boat strikes in Latin America. And through all that, it hasn't always been all that clear exactly how all of these actions cohere. But now the Trump administration has released this document that tries to articulate the country's foreign policy strategy, that tries to make sense of it all.
So first of all, what is this document?
So this is the national security strategy. And administrations don't turn it out because they want to. They turn it out because they have to. Congress actually requires every administration to go do it. But it also ends up becoming a kind of Rorschach test of what an administration's priorities are.
And in this particular case, as you read this document, it's only about 30 pages long, the thing that really strikes you is that it is a retreat from the post-World War II bipartisan understanding that the role of the United States is to defend liberty, support democracies around the world, support our allies.
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Chapter 3: What does the new national security strategy reveal about Trump's goals?
But there's kind of no follow up about what the strategy would be to avoid future war with Iran.
You're saying basically, David, that there's much less direct discussion here of our adversaries and how to counter them. North Korea isn't in this document at all. Iran isn't there very much. So what does this document focus on in terms of our national security concerns?
Well, Natalie, there's a lot of discussion and a lot of criticism of our closest allies, the Europeans. You know, I think the first thing that you see in this document is something that's pretty familiar to us all from the first term and certainly from the past year, which is that America is tired of supporting the allies, that it won't put up with Europe's trade blocs anymore.
that is frustrated with the European Union, which of course the president has said was built to screw the United States, that we can't necessarily be supporting them in their conventional defense. And it makes clear that they have to go do that themselves. Now, the fact of the matter is, As the document acknowledges, the Europeans made a lot of progress in this regard over the past year.
And you may remember that back over the summer, they committed to spend up to 5% of their GDP on defense. And that was a huge win for President Trump. And in my mind, something that was really long overdue and one of the big successes that he had this year.
Right. They went from 2% of GDP to now saying they'd spend up to 5%. It was a huge increase.
A huge increase. Some of it's for concrete defense. And I think it's certainly fair to say that his threat to leave NATO and to abandon Europe certainly focused their attention.
The next big debate we have, of course, is whether or not it was in our interest as well, because we get a lot of benefits from a tight alliance with the Europeans who can act as a deterrent against war with Russia and other bad actors. So yes, it was a big win. It may have come at some long-term cost.
But let's acknowledge that President Trump was able to do what Barack Obama and Joe Biden and Trump himself in his first term proved unable to do, which is get the Europeans belatedly to take their defense seriously.
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Chapter 4: What does the Trump administration's focus on economic strength mean for foreign policy?
If states keep their laws in place, Trump directed federal regulators to withhold funds for broadband and other projects. Finally, in a stinging defeat for Trump, Republican state lawmakers in Indiana have rejected a new congressional map ordered up by the White House that would have made it harder for Democrats to win any congressional seats in the state.
The Republican lawmakers who voted against the new map said that it would undermine people's faith in government and warned Trump that he should stay out of the state's politics. Today's episode was produced by Olivia Natt and Anna Foley. It was edited by Maria Byrne and Liz O'Balin with help from Paige Cowett. Contains music by Alicia Baitup and Marion Lozano. And was engineered by Chris Wood.
That's it for The Daily. I'm Natalie Kittroweth. See you Monday.