Today, we’re exploring how the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 5 between VP Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump will affect global politics.
To begin with, the fundamental trends in U.S. foreign policy seen since the start of Trump’s first term in 2017 are unlikely to dramatically change. Those trends include a retrenchment on globalization, as most clearly evidenced by growing trade protectionism and stricter measures limiting immigration. U.S. foreign policy is also increasingly defined by geopolitical competition, primarily with China, but also with its autocratic “axis” of Russia, Iran and North Korea.
Both shifts have weakened the multilateralism at the heart of the liberal international order that Washington has historically championed, if inconsistently. Harris and Trump differ greatly in how they will shape and manage these enduring shifts and what they see as their end goals. But neither is likely to reverse course on them.