Trump Is Redefining, Not Abandoning, American Soft Power

Based on WHO estimates, American combined assessed and voluntary contributions to the WHO's 2024-2025 budget is US$706 million, compared to $184 million for China.

Whatever the metrics, it is hard for American taxpayers to understand how the world's second largest economy with a significantly larger population pays only 26% of what the US contributes to the WHO.

Trump's critics have characterized these decisions as America retreating from global leadership. In reality, they represent a strategic pivot toward a more transactional form of influence.

Trump recognizes that foreign aid can be restructured to serve a more immediate geopolitical purpose, aligning with his broader“America First” doctrine. Aid and alliances are now treated as business arrangements with expectations of immediate returns – a sharp departure from past administrations that justified foreign assistance primarily as instruments for building goodwill and sowing benign influence.

Having deconstructed the old model, the challenge now is how to complete the redefinition of American soft power for this new era. Four key areas demand particular attention:

First, America must transition from viewing foreign aid as charity to embracing strategic economic engagement. China's Belt and Road Initiative demonstrates how infrastructure projects can build influence while ensuring recipient nations see tangible benefits from alignment with a major power.

America should develop its own model of partnership that yields mutual advantages. It is not clear the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) is the vehicle to do this, thus Trump's desire to create an American sovereign wealth fund.

Second, the US faces global threats on three key fronts: military, economic and technological. The Trump team has been extremely clear on the first two threats. The technological front can sometimes fall under the radar but is vital to success on all other fronts.

It is imperative that US technological leadership becomes a cornerstone of America's global influence strategy. As digital connectivity reshapes international relations, US dominance in technology, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity offers powerful leverage to shape global norms and standards in ways that reflect democratic values.

Third, America needs resilient, flexible alliances rather than outdated treaty frameworks. The limitations of institutions like the UN and NATO have become increasingly apparent with the UN hamstrung by the Security Council and NATO struggling to balance the interests of all members ranging from Turkey to France.

The EU itself continually has a love-hate relationship with different members from Italy to Hungary. Interest-based coalitions that reflect contemporary geopolitical realities will prove more effective than rigid multilateral structures designed for a bygone era.

Finally, America must compete more effectively in the global information space. Nations are now shaping their own images through state-controlled media and digital diplomacy. The US must rethink how it communicates its values and interests to global audiences.

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Abandoning platforms like Voice of America without replacement strategies surrenders the battlefield of ideas at a critical moment when America's enemies will spend richly to ensure their narratives gain global traction.

While podcasts and new streams of communications dominate in the West, a large swathe of the world's population still turns on the television, listens to the radio and picks up a newspaper for world news. To abandon those information spaces would be counterintuitive to American diplomacy.

Critics say Trump's tenure is irreparably damaging traditional US soft power; the reality is it is exposing the need to modernize America's approach to global influence.

Whether through economic incentives, technological leadership or reimagined alliances, America's ability to attract and influence must evolve alongside an evolving geopolitical landscape.

The challenge for the Trump team and beyond is to reconstruct American soft power with a clearer strategy-one that recognizes both the limitations of past approaches and the opportunities of a new era.

Kurt Davis Jr is a Millennium Fellow at the Atlantic Council and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He advises private, public and state-owned companies and their boards as well as creditors across the globe on a range of transactions.

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