The Trump administration has proposed shuttering USAID and cutting some of the State Department’s critical diplomatic programs; it has also announced tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico and China. As scholar Borja Santos Porras has noted, these measures may lead to modest savings, however, the long-term damage to the reputation of the U.S. abroad will likely outweigh any such gains.
As an expert on how nations manage their reputations, particularly in terms of rebuilding diminished ones, I believe the recent foreign-aid cuts are undermining a critical foreign-policy tool that is often undervalued, if not outright ignored, within the Trump administration: soft power.
