America First is American imperialism by another name

A United States that plays by no rules except narrowly selfish ones will only breed resentment and anger

President Trump.

From day one of his presidency, one of Donald Trump's mantras has been "America First." He even invoked it during the rally to launch his 2020 re-election campaign in Orlando this week. His supporters on the isolationist right have always insisted that there is nothing sinister about this — all it means is that America should quit meddling in other countries and devote the government's resources to fixing its own problems at home.

But Trump's recent "deal" with Mexico to stop the growing flow of Central American migrants at Mexico's southern border shows that America First is just code for using America's considerable soft and hard power to force other countries to do his bidding. It's a formula not for ending American imperialism but for replacing a seemingly high-minded one with a nakedly self-serving one.

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Shikha Dalmia

Shikha Dalmia is a visiting fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University studying the rise of populist authoritarianism.  She is a Bloomberg View contributor and a columnist at the Washington Examiner, and she also writes regularly for The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous other publications. She considers herself to be a progressive libertarian and an agnostic with Buddhist longings and a Sufi soul.