2026-07-15T19:43:08.760Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/15/politics/trump-america-first-foreign-policy
唐纳德·特朗普总统竞选时承诺将“美国优先”作为施政纲领。而他的执政思路，始终围绕着如何让美国“捞到好处”展开。
在特朗普的交易型世界观里，美国更像是商业交易中的利益相关方，而非资本主义和民主的灯塔。在特朗普第二任期的外交政策中，一个显著的核心关注点是：向盟友和对手双方索要“过路费”、征收关税，或是夺取外国资源的所有权。在此期间，特朗普还将其扩张主义愿景投向了格陵兰、加拿大和巴拿马运河。
这些举措通常都无法按计划实现，正如全球在特朗普第一任期就见识过的那样：墨西哥从未如他反复承诺的那样，为美墨边境墙买单。但在特朗普看来，美国的军事力量和经济实力始终是可供利用的资产。近几个月来：
► 他提议对途经霍尔木兹海峡的美国保护商船征收20%的“过路费”，随后又放弃了这一想法。
► 他扶持了自己亲手推翻的委内瑞拉反民主政权残余势力，排挤民主反对派，从而掌控了委内瑞拉石油的销售权。
► 他搁置了通往底特律的新桥开通事宜，试图向加拿大榨取更多利益，尽管这座桥的建造成本本就由加拿大承担。
► 如今他对乌克兰态度转暖，称美国在该国拥有“重大利益”，因为当地有稀土资源。
暂且不论在本应开放的国际水域征收“过路费”的合法性问题——以及伊朗早在此前就建立了类似收费体系——从不同视角来看，这种“保护收费”的做法要么是常识之举，要么就是有组织的犯罪行径。
无论如何，这一计划最终都未能实施。不到一天，特朗普就改变了方向，转而承诺美国将从另一种途径获得“报酬”——这次的支付方是海湾国家，而非航运公司。
“在与中东领导层进行了卓有成效的会谈后，我决定用海湾各国与美国达成的贸易和投资协议，取代此前提出的20%美国追偿费，”特朗普在首次提出收费提议的次日，于社交媒体发文称。
特朗普或许试图传递的核心逻辑是：对于他亲手挑起、且迄今仍无法收场的海外纠葛，美国将从中获得相应回报。
五角大楼尚未为美伊战争核算具体成本，但监督机构估算其耗资已超400亿美元，且仍在增加。美国民众每次前往加油站，都能切身感受到这场冲突带来的经济代价。
早在今年2月，特朗普就进一步激化了与加拿大的紧张关系：他要求美国对半分割位于密歇根州底特律和安大略省温莎之间的戈尔迪·豪大桥，尽管这座桥的建造成本全部由加拿大承担。
两国重新协商协议期间，大桥的开通计划被推迟。最终的解决方案似乎是：加拿大将在未来15年内，将大桥通行费的净利润与一个经济发展基金分成，但该基金的具体运作细节尚未公布。据加拿大政府消息，这座大桥将于7月27日正式通车。
加拿大总理马克·卡尼在接受CTV采访时为这项即将达成的协议进行了辩护。
“‘净利润’这个词在这里至关重要。我们是在加拿大收回全部建造成本之后，才会参与分成，”卡尼说道。
“实际上可用于分成的净利润并不会很多，”他补充道。
特朗普并未详细说明海湾国家如今将以何种形式对美投资，毕竟他已放弃了收费计划。但他多次声称，自己已经争取到外国对美投资资金。他还时常提及一个天文数字：他已为美国争取到19万亿美元的外国投资。
CNN记者丹尼尔·戴尔曾试图查证，但未能找到特朗普任期内美国获得过接近这一规模的外国投资的证据。不过特朗普仍定期重复这一不实说法。
特朗普贸易与经济政策的核心是对进口商品征收关税。这些关税本质上是对进口商品征收的税款。尽管经济学家普遍认为，最终承担关税成本的是美国消费者，他们将为此支付更高的商品价格，但特朗普始终坚称，关税是由外国支付的。
无论如何，美国政府目前正处于偿还关税的过程中——今年美国最高法院裁定，此前征收的部分关税属于非法征收。例如，今年6月，美国就偿还了超过490亿美元的非法关税。特朗普曾表示，他将寻求新的方式对进口商品征税。与此同时，企业和个人发起的追回非法关税的诉讼正呈激增之势。
尽管关税政策可以通过政府报告追踪，但美国对委内瑞拉的控制权细节却鲜为人知。今年早些时候，特朗普政府授权美军抓捕委内瑞拉前总统尼古拉斯·马杜罗，并将其引渡至美国受审。但马杜罗政权的残余势力在特朗普政府的监管下仍保留了权力，而美国则掌控了委内瑞拉石油资源的销售。
这些石油销售的规模和具体细节始终难以查证。甚至连共和党议员都对这种不透明的做法表示担忧，尤其是在该国遭遇毁灭性地震之后。
与此同时，委内瑞拉政治反对派基本被排除在相关进程之外——尽管反对派领导人玛丽亚·科里娜·马查多在美国对马杜罗采取军事行动前，曾将自己的诺贝尔和平奖赠予特朗普。《纽约时报》报道称，美国国务卿马可·鲁比奥正从远处高度管控委内瑞拉局势，通过现政权实施间接统治。
曾在特朗普第一任期担任委内瑞拉问题特别代表的埃利奥特·艾布拉姆斯，在《自由报》撰文指出，本届政府将获取石油资源置于改革之上。
“政策的重心一直是寻求在委内瑞拉进行投资，最重要的是提振石油产量，而恢复民主则被无限期推迟，”艾布拉姆斯写道。“这是一项适得其反的政策。”
在上周的北约峰会上，特朗普的一番言论让美国企业和乌克兰总统弗拉基米尔·泽连斯基都感到意外：他表示乌克兰应当有权许可生产并自行制造防御型爱国者拦截弹。
特朗普对乌克兰态度转暖，或许与其认为美国在该国拥有利益有关——但这并非出于对欧洲民主国家的支持，而是因为乌克兰拥有自然资源。
“我们如今在那个国家有了一点利益，因为我们在当地拥有一些土地，还有矿产资源。乌克兰拥有世界上最丰富的稀土资源，是全球最佳的稀土产地之一，”他提到去年美国与乌克兰签署的一项共同投资基金协议时说道。但特朗普对该协议的理解，可能与乌克兰方面存在分歧。乌克兰方面始终坚持，本国对其自然资源拥有完全所有权。
向北约索要更多经费或将引发意想不到的后果
特朗普对北约的主要不满在于，他认为欧洲国家没有足额承担军费——这一观点并非毫无依据。特朗普将这一抱怨表述为欧洲国家应当直接向美国付费，但实际上北约成员国本应将本国GDP的固定比例用于国防开支。
CNN主持人法里德·扎卡利亚近日指出，特朗普推动欧洲国家增加国防开支的做法值得肯定，但这也将带来意想不到的后果：欧洲国家将更不愿追随美国的立场。他称旧有体系“稳定、和平，且以美国为中心”。
“我们已经引发了连锁反应，假以时日，美国人将会怀念旧有的北约体系——并非因为它公平，而是因为它是有史以来最成功的安全体系，而美国正是这个体系的核心，”扎卡利亚说道。
当特朗普改变世界对美国的看法时，世界其他国家或许也会有同样的感受。
Trump’s foreign policy is to try to get America paid
2026-07-15T19:43:08.760Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/15/politics/trump-america-first-foreign-policy
President Donald Trump ran for office promising to put America First. He has governed with an eye toward getting America paid.
In Trump’s transactional view of the world, the US is more like an interested party in a business deal than a beacon of capitalism and democracy. Efforts to extract tolls, impose tariffs or take ownership of resources in foreign countries, both allies and opponents, have been a notable focus of foreign policy in Trump 2.0. in which the president has also cast his expansionist vision to Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal.
These things don’t usually work out according to plan, as the world learned during Trump’s first term when Mexico did not pay for a border wall like he repeatedly vowed it would. But the military might and economic heft of the United States are as ever, in Trump’s view, assets to be exploited. In recent months:
► He suggested — and then abandoned — a 20% toll for US protection of cargo passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
► He took over the sale of Venezuela’s oil by propping up what remains of the antidemocratic regime he decapitated and icing out the democratic opposition.
► He held up opening of a new bridge to Detroit, trying to squeeze something more out of Canada even though Canada paid to build the bridge.
► He’s gotten more friendly toward Ukraine now that he says the US has a “stake” in the country’s rare earths.
Setting aside the legal issue of putting a toll on what’s supposed to be open water — and the fact that Iran set up a tolling system first — charging for protection sounds either like common sense or like an organized crime tactic, depending on your perspective.
In either case, it was not meant to be. Within a day, Trump had moved on and was instead promising the US would receive another sort of payment — this time from Gulf nations instead of shipping companies.
“Based on highly productive conversations with Middle East leadership, I have decided to replace the 20% United States Reimbursement Fee with Trade and Investment Deals that the various Gulf States will be making into the United States,” Trump wrote in a social media post Tuesday, one day after first proposing the toll idea.
The underlying idea Trump may be trying to convey is that the US will be getting something in exchange for this foreign entanglement he started and has so far been unable to end.
The Pentagon has not put a price tag on the war with Iran, but watchdog groups have guessed it will cost more than $40 billion and counting. Everyday Americans have seen the financial toll of the conflict each time they head to the gas station.
Back in February, Trump piled on to his tense relationship with Canada by demanding the US should split ownership of the Gordie Howe Bridge between Detroit, Michigan, and Windsor, Ontario, even though Canada paid to build the bridge.
The bridge’s opening was delayed as the countries reworked their agreement. The resolution appears to be that Canada will split net profits from tolls for the next 15 years with an economic development fund, although specifics on how that fund will work are lacking. The bridge will now open on July 27, according to the Canadian government.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney defended the emerging deal in an interview with CTV.
“The word ‘net’ does a lot of work in this. We are sharing after Canada is paid back,” according to Carney.
“There’s not going to be a lot of net to split,” he said.
Trump did not expand on what sort of investment Gulf nations will put into the US now that he has abandoned the toll idea, but he has repeatedly claimed that he has secured funding from foreign countries to be invested in the US. He frequently cites the enormous figure of $19 trillion in foreign investment that he has secured.
CNN’s Daniel Dale has tried and failed to find anything close to that level of foreign investment in the US during Trump’s term. But Trump continues to make the fictitious claim with regularity.
The backbone of Trump’s trade and economic policy was to impose tariffs on imports. These are effectively taxes paid on imported goods. While economists generally argue that it is American consumers who ultimately pay for tariffs in the form of higher prices, Trump has argued it is foreign countries that pay them.
In any event, the US government is currently in the process of paying back tariffs the Supreme Court ruled this year it should not have collected. In June, for instance, the US repaid more than $49 billion. Trump has said he will look for new ways to impose taxes on imports. Meanwhile, lawsuits from businesses and individuals to reclaim illegal tariffs are proliferating.
While the tariff policy is trackable through government reports, much less is known about US control of Venezuela. The Trump administration authorized the US military to capture former President Nicolás Maduro early this year and bring him to the US for prosecution. But the rest of Maduro’s regime has retained power with oversight from the Trump administration, which has taken control of the sale of Venezuela’s oil resources.
Details on the size and scale of those oil sales have been hard to come by. Even Republican members of Congress have voiced concern about the lack of transparency, particularly after devastating earthquakes rocked the country.
The political opposition, meanwhile, has largely been left out of the process even though opposition leader María Corina Machado gifted Trump her Nobel Peace Prize before the US military acted against Maduro. The New York Times reported that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is exerting a high degree of control over the country from afar, working through the existing regime.
Elliot Abrams, who was special representative for Venezuela during Trump’s first term, wrote for The Free Press that the administration is choosing access to oil over reform.
“The focus has been on seeking investments in Venezuela and above all boosting oil production, with recovery and democracy pushed off to an indefinite future,” Abrams wrote. “This is a self-defeating policy.”
Trump surprised US companies and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a NATO conference last week when he said Ukraine should be able to license and manufacture defensive Patriot interceptors.
Trump’s warmer stance toward Ukraine may have something to do with his view that the US has an interest in the country — not as a democracy in Europe, but as a place with natural resources.
“We have a little stake in that country now because we have some land in that country, but we have minerals. It’s among the wealthiest, it’s among the best land anywhere in the world for rare earth,” he said, referring to a deal the US signed with Ukraine last year that creates a joint investment fund. But Trump may have a different view than Ukraine of what the deal does. Ukrainians have maintained that they retain full ownership of their natural resources.
Demanding more from NATO will have unintended consequences
Trump’s main gripe with NATO has been his argument — which has some basis — that European countries were not paying enough. Trump phrases the complaint as if the countries should be paying the US, when in fact NATO countries are supposed to be dedicating a certain percentage of their GDP to defense spending.
CNN’s Fareed Zakaria recently argued that Trump should get credit for making European nations spend more on defense, but also that it will have unintended consequences such as making European countries less likely to defer to the US. The old system, he said, “was stable, peaceful, and pro-American.”
“We have set off a chain reaction, and over time, Americans will come to miss the old NATO, not because it was fair, but because it was the most successful security system the world has ever known, with America at its center,” Zakaria said.
The same could be said for the rest of the world as Trump changes the way the world looks at the United States.
