MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Earlier this week, President Trump pressured the king of Jordan to take in Palestinian refugees so that the U.S. could, quote, "take over and redevelop Gaza." Yet, just yesterday, he suggested Ukraine would have to cede territory to achieve peace with Russia. As NPR's Franco Ordoñez reports, those are just a couple examples of Trump's foreign policy that have shaken the globe.
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FRANCO ORDOÑEZ, BYLINE: At his inaugural address, Trump declared the dawn of a new golden age for America.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: From this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world.
ORDOÑEZ: In the hours and days that followed, Trump temporarily froze foreign aid. He began steps to dismantle USAID and renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. The moves have raised questions of whether Trump's America First movement is moving from isolationism to imperialism.
Bonnie Glaser, who directs the German Marshall Fund's Indo-Pacific program, says Trump is leaning into foreign policy in ways he didn't in his first term.
BONNIE GLASER: This is America First on steroids.
ORDOÑEZ: Trump was expected to pull the U.S. out of international institutions and use trade threats as leverage for negotiating. But what has shocked leaders around the world, she says, are the threats to take over Greenland, the Panama Canal, Gaza and even Canada.
GLASER: Trump wants to do everything he possibly can think of to strengthen the power of the United States to bring investments to the U.S., jobs to the U.S., to control territory.
ORDOÑEZ: Trump never bought into the rules-based system that encouraged cooperation among like-minded allies. The idea that lifting up friends economically, socially and democratically would also lift the U.S. Ivo Daalder, who served as a U.S. ambassador to NATO in the Obama administration, says Trump appears more emboldened to disrupt the system in ways he couldn't the first time.
IVO DAALDER: There's a real clear sense that in this world, and in this moment, the opportunity exists in ways that may not have existed in the first term or ever before to remake America's government and to remake America's role in the world.
ORDOÑEZ: On his flight to the Super Bowl, Trump signed a proclamation making official the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. I asked him how all these moves align with America First.
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TRUMP: Because it makes us bigger, stronger and better and more protective.
ORDOÑEZ: And he says he and his team are better prepared this time.
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TRUMP: It's more aggressive. It's better. And why? Because I think I've had a lot of experience. And in my first term, I was fighting everybody because they were very aggressive towards me.
ORDOÑEZ: In the process, Trump has done away with traditional roles of diplomacy. John Simon, who served as ambassador to the African Union in the Bush administration, points to Trump's handling of USAID - the government's agency to deliver humanitarian aid. He says the agency is one of the best ways to keep America safe from its enemies.
JOHN SIMON: We're taking away this incredibly valuable arrow in our quiver to build support and respect and influence around the world.
ORDOÑEZ: Instead, Trump has appropriated methods used by authoritarian power, such as China and Russia, says Lori Esposito Murray, a veteran in diplomatic circles now at the Council on Foreign Relations.
LORI ESPOSITO MURRAY: President Trump is not using traditional diplomatic tools, diplomacy, to achieve objectives. He is actually using the tools and the approach that our adversaries use in order to achieve their objectives within their sphere of influence.
ORDOÑEZ: She says Trump sees the Western Hemisphere as part of the U.S. sphere of influence, much like China views Taiwan and Russia Ukraine.
MURRAY: I think you can fold the Panama Canal and Greenland into that strategic thinking.
ORDOÑEZ: So in Trump's view, putting America first.
Franco Ordoñez, NPR News.
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