How Trump is turning US’ foreign policy into his business playground

Throughout his career, Donald Trump has worn many hats; politician, businessman, and even, some might argue, actor. While his reputation as a businessman was built in the private sector, he has increasingly applied that mindset to politics, especially since his entry into the political arena in 2016. Now, in 2025, Trump has returned, seemingly more of a businessman than ever, running what some might call his biggest venture yet: the United States of America. 

During his first term, Trump made it clear that his unique personality would shape his approach to governing. This time, however, he appears even more unabashed in treating politics like business, leading the nation as if it were his own company competing on the global stage. His decisions and strategies often reflect a commercial mindset, one that raises serious concerns not just for Americans, but for the rest of the world.

The backstory of a businessman

It seems appropriate to begin by talking about Trump’s lived experiences in the business world. He was born in an accommodated and wealthy family in New York; his father, Fred Trump, ran a real estate company that had an extensive portfolio of residential housing projects in the New York City boroughs. When Trump took over in 1971, he shifted the family business from residential units in Brooklyn and Queens to fancy Manhattan projects.

Since then, Trump expanded the family business exponentially with the opening of casinos, hotels, golf courses and condominiums all over the country. However, not everything was a success: some of his businesses faced several bankruptcies, and were unable to pay debts back to banks, investors and stock owners. Regarding this situation, Trump declared back in 2011 that "I've used the laws of this country to pare debt. ... We'll have the company. We'll throw it into a chapter. We'll negotiate with the banks. We'll make a fantastic deal. You know, it’s like on ‘The Apprentice.’ It’s not personal. It’s just business.” This provides the perfect proof of how everything revolves around business for him; he can make deals even out of heavy debts, and he is certainly not ashamed of it.

The conclusion to be drawn is that business, whether in positive or negative terms, is part of Trump’s lifestyle. He has acquired the experience to thrive through that arena, and it is not really shocking that he applies such mindset in all facets of his life, including politics, or even reality shows, like ‘The Apprentice,’ which he hosted back in 2004.

Trump’s first term

During his first term, Trump already proved that his business-making style would be present, at least to some extent, in the running of the American nation. Some decisions taken between 2016 and 2020 showed off this particular characteristic, for example when he retrieved the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement.

In 2015, under Barack Obama’s presidency, the US signed and ratified such Agreement, agreeing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through climate plans, as well as providing financial support to developing countries. The economic and industrial implications for the US weren’t precisely in line with Trump’s financial plans for the country. In turn, the Paris Climate Agreement could imply higher costs for industries in order to reduce emissions and adopt cleaner technologies, as well as potential job losses in fossil fuel sectors like coal, oil, and gas. These plausible negative consequences led him to retrieving America out of the deal once he took office in 2017, even though the official withdrawal did not take place until 2020. The economic implications of this deal were certainly not worth it for Trump, as he declared “it disadvantages the United Statesto the exclusive benefit of other countries, leaving American workers, who I love, and taxpayers to absorb the cost in terms of lost jobs, lower wages, shuttered factories, and vastly diminished economic production.”

Trump took a similar approach in his renegotiation of NAFTA back in 2017. He had long criticised the original 1994 agreement for what he considered “encouraging" companies to outsource manufacturing to Mexico, leading to factory closures and job losses in the US, particularly in the auto and manufacturing sectors. In 2017, he initiated a full renegotiation of the deal, arguing that NAFTA had failed American workers and allowed trade partners to take advantage of the U.S. The resulting United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), signed in 2018 and enacted in 2020, aimed to correct these imbalances. It included stricter rules to ensure more manufacturing stayed within North America and provisions to discourage companies from relocating jobs to countries with lower labor costs. Trump sought to apply his economic plan to revive U.S. industry, by protecting domestic jobs, and reducing the trade deficit. The USMCA became a key part of his narrative of reclaiming economic sovereignty and renegotiating deals that, in his view, had hollowed out the American middle class.

Nowhere was Trump’s CEO-style diplomacy more visible than in his handling of North Korea back in 2017. Rather than relying on decades of careful, multilateral negotiations, he took the bold step of restarting direct talks with Kim Jong-un, betting that a personal relationship could succeed where traditional diplomacy had stalled. In true Trump fashion, he treated the situation like a high-stakes business deal, accompanied with dramatic photo session, handshake summits, and bold promises. He became the first sitting US president to meet face-to-face with a North Korean leader, hoping to strike a deal on denuclearization. While the talks didn’t lead to any concrete agreements and North Korea continued developing its nuclear weapons program, Trump managed to shift the tone of the relationship, at least temporarily. This was the perfect example of a pure-Trump style: direct, disruptive, and always focused on making the deal.

An (expected?) comeback: The second term

Since his defeat in the 2020 elections, Trump proclaimed that he would return to the White House in the next term, which he did. Retired at his ‘Floridian White House’, Mar-a-Lago, Trump pulled the strings and prepared the stage alongside its national and international allies for his comeback in 2024. In an agitated election campaign, Trump faced America’s Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris, who aimed to succeed President Biden and avoid Trump’s return. However, Trump became America’s 47th President and made his return to the White House, more emboldened than ever.

Many of the ideas Trump flirted with during his first presidency are now back but, this time, they seem more intentional. Back then, some of his decisions seemed chaotic or improvised, like spontaneous tweets that turned into policy. Now, he’s applying the same business-first mindset, but in a much more structured and open way. There’s less hesitation, fewer internal obstacles, and a team around him that seems to fully support his vision. He no longer pretends to play by the rules of traditional diplomacy, but instead, he’s doubling down on the idea that America should always get something out of every deal; otherwise, it is not worth engaging. Itseems as if Trump had taken the lessons of his first term and turned them into a blueprint, one where foreign policy is just another business opportunity.

Trump’s early moves in his second term say a lot about what matters to him: loyalty and image. Appointing Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, for example, was not just about diplomacy; it was a message instead. Rubio is Latino, a high-profile Republican, and someone who knows how to play both the political and media game. That choice seems less about foreign policy experience, but more about branding: showing strength in Latin America, appealing to Hispanic voters at home, and surrounding himself with people who won’t challenge his approach. Across the board, Trump’s picks seem to follow the same logic of rewarding loyalty, building the brand, and keeping control.

One of the most headline-grabbing (and now ironic) moves floated during the campaign was Trump’s idea that Elon Musk could lead the Department of Government Efficiency. At the time, it seemed appropriate, a reflection of Trump’s preference for disruptive figures who mirror his own outsider status. Musk, after all, is no public servant but a famously unpredictable entrepreneur known for cutting costs, challenging norms, and courting controversy on platforms like Twitter and in his companies like Tesla and SpaceX. The idea of him ‘trimming the fat’ in Washington fit neatly with Trump’s recurring pitch to run the government like a business; lean, confrontational, and focused on optics over process. However, recent arguments between Trump and Musk have cast doubt on this alliance. Musk has left the government, not without giving one last mediatic show, and Trump, never one to tolerate disloyalty, has fired back in kind. What once looked like a mutual admiration alliance now seems more like a brief flirtation between two egos too big to share the same stage.

Business over diplomacy: The return of transactional foreign policy

Back in January, during his very first days in office, Trump quickly launched his initial wave of measures and policies to re-start his very own American diplomacy machinery. One of the first moves was related to tariffs, not as technical trade policy, but as an unmistakable message. Canada, Mexico and China were the first states targeted. Trump announced a sweeping 25% tariff on Canadian and Mexican goods, and at the same time, doubled existing tariffs on China from 10% to 20%. His reasoning was not buried in trade data; instead, it was blunt and political. According to him, these countries were not cooperating on particular non-negotiable issues, especially border security, drugs and manufacturing.

For Trump, this was not about diplomacy, but a business negotiation. In his view, if you pressure, you get leverage and, eventually, rather you get what you want or you walk out. As a matter of fact, both Canada and Mexico eventually gave in. Canada appointed a new ‘fentanyl czar’ to address drug trafficking, while Mexico deployed 10,000 members of its National Guard to its northern border. Once they complied, the tariffs were lifted, just like closing a deal. This was not ‘traditional’ politics, but Trump running foreign policy like a boardroom operation. It seems evident that, for him, global partnerships are not a priority; what matters instead is that America gets the upper hand, and preferably on Trump’s terms.

For its part, China did not yield. Unlike Mexico and Canada, Beijing showed no signs of bending to Trump’s demands, dismissing both the security warnings and tariff threats. As a result, in April 2025, Trump escalated with a ‘Tariff Tsunami’ that hit almost every trading partner on earth, sparing only the countries that had already caved, like Canada and Mexico. China, as the defiant heavyweight, faced the steepest increases. But this was not entirely about punishing, it was—in Trump’s words—about “levelling the playing field.” He framed it like a CEO correcting a lopsided contract: the US was the company, and the global trade system had been bleeding its profits for too long. The US Administration renamed April 2nd as ‘Liberation Day,’ since it was not just a tariff announcement, but a rebranding of American economic policy, marking the moment Trump claimed to take back control from what he saw as unfair deals and parasitic dependencies. The message was simple: if you want access to the US market, it has to be on terms that benefit the US or more specifically, that benefit Trump’s vision of a profitable, self-sustaining America Inc.

What made this wave of tariffs even more striking was Trump’s refusal to differentiate between friends and foes. In his true shark-like fashion, he slapped high tariffs not only on rival economies, but also on traditional allies like the European Union, the United Kingdom, and even Israel. In this sense, loyalty did not matter, but trade deficits did. Everything was about fair game in Trump’s worldview: allies were not partners, but competitors in a global market rigged against the US. According to his logic, if these countries truly valued their relationship with the US, they would accept new terms that favored American workers. Nearly 70 countries reportedly reached out to initiate negotiations, scrambling to shield themselves from the tariff storm.

Trump made it clear that deals would only be made if were directly beneficial for the US—and especially for its workers—and helped close what he saw as chronic trade imbalances. In his view, all options were on the table, and no deal would be one-size-fits-all. In fact, he instructed his team to craft tailor-made agreements for each country, much like a CEO cutting personalized contracts with suppliers and clients. This logic was recently put into practice with China after months of tariff escalation; both sides agreed to a 90-day suspension, during which the US would reduce tariffs on Chinese goods from 145% to 30% and China would lower its retaliatory tariffs from 125% to 10%. Such suspension, agreed during high-level negotiations in Geneva, was not framed as reconciliation but as a temporary, transactional arrangement. This has given Trump a tactical breathing space to negotiate the most favorable terms possible to American interests. Even in this sense, Trump’s approach remained unchanged, treating diplomacy like deal-making, measured not by consensus, but by returns.

Every relationship, no matter how historic, is now subject to renegotiation –or even rejection– if it does not serve Trump’s interests. Under this logic, economic benefit halts multilateral tradition, and maximizing gains has taken priority over maintaining global cooperation or shared responsibility. In his eyes, the world is not a network of allies, but a marketplace in which the US is simply playing to win.

Managing politics as a business model

If tariffs were Trump’s blunt instruments, his more eccentric proposals would serve as loud declarations of a new doctrine, which fuses governance with aggressive commercial logic. The idea of buying Greenland, which initially sparked global amusement, was not just a geopolitical prank, but Trump laying out a vision of diplomacy as acquisition,  and sovereignty as real estate. In his eyes, Greenland is an undeveloped land with untapped value, which is poorly managed by Denmark, but ripe for a better offer. While to many Americans it is nonsense, to Trump, it does makes perfect sense, because it is something that benefits American interests, so the US must have it regardless the cost.

This philosophy extended even further. In March 2025, the US administration unveiled a fast-track citizenship scheme, offering US passports in return for a $5 million investment. Marketed as an instrument to ‘bring in the best,’ this policy effectively rebranded American citizenship as a premium asset, only sold to the highest bidder. In this manner, nationhood turned into a commodity, portraying the US—once again—not just like a country, but a portfolio in which the leader was managing assets, not alliances. Whether it was land, trade, or even identity, Trump has made it clear that everything is negotiable, at the right price.

Partners in power: Trump and his new allies

While traditional US diplomacy leaned on alliances with liberal democracies, Trump has built a different kind of network stitched together not by shared values, but by shared style. His portfolio of allies looks more like a club of like-minded CEOs than a coalition of heads of State. Bukele in El Salvador, Milei in Argentina, Meloni in Italy, Orbán in Hungary: what unites them is not ideology ‘per se,’ but their own personal and unique way of approaching politics. Trump tolerates and amplifies these personalities, considering their rise as a validation of his own.

Besides his relationship with these unique Presidents, Trump’s unusually cordial tone with figures like Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-un and even the Taliban, has turned heads across the diplomatic world. It is worth asking whether it is a display of realpolitik, or just admiration for strongmen who, like himself, play by their own rules. Either way, it has marked a seismic shift in American diplomacy, where flattery replaced pressure and handshakes replaced demands. In other words, the powerful and decisive get a seat at the table, regardless of their regime's track record.

This new club of powerful players is not bound by treaties, but by mutual respect for strength and results. Trump often framed these relationships as pragmatic rather than ideological, a shared understanding among ‘winners’ who cut through red tape to get things done. In this regard, the underlying principle is that leadership is not about consensus, but dominance, a position in which Trump feels like home.

Profits over principles: The retreat from global responsibility

Instead of promoting tough talk and personalized diplomacy, Trump’s foreign policy doctrine rewrote the very rationale for US engagement abroad. Under his watch, global responsibility has been reframed as a costly indulgence and, as a result, if a foreign initiative does not yield visible returns for the US, it is cut, sidelined, or threatened with withdrawal. In this sense, aid is no longer humanitarian, but transactional.

One of the first targets in this regard was Latin America. Colombia, for instance, found itself on the verge of receiving sanctions over migration for denying permission to any US plane carrying ‘illegal’ migrants back home. Panama, for its part, was threatened to distance itself from Chinese infrastructure projects, particularly those connected to the Panama Canal. In both cases, the underlying principle was the same: strategic compliance in exchange for continued support. In this manner, the U.S. was not investing in the stability of the region, but protecting its own geopolitical assets.

Africa was next. Trump slashed funding for health programs, including key initiatives combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and maternal mortality. While critics saw it as the abandonment of some of the most vulnerable population worldwide, for Trump, it was cutting on ventures that did not turn a profit.

Trump’s foreign policy resembles a portfolio in which every country is a case study in a cost-benefit analysis. If the US is spending more than gaining in terms of trade, influence, or security concessions, the relationship is downgraded or scrapped altogether. Long-term strategic interests are weighed against short-term financial returns and, more often than not, the balance sheet dictates the outcome. The signal is unmistakable: America is no longer the global sheriff, nor the patron of liberal democracy. Instead, under Trump, it has become a leaner and tougher enterprise that expects loyalty, results and preferably a profit margin.

Masterstroke or improvisation? The logic behind the ‘madness’

Is there a coherent doctrine behind Trump’s foreign policy, or is it all just gut instinct dressed in business jargon? On the surface, Trump’s diplomacy appears chaotic with tweets replacing diplomatic cables and threats without any kind of follow-through. But beneath the noise, there is a pattern: personalization, confrontation and a singular obsession with victory. For example, Trump’s administration has floated the idea of direct mediation in the Ukraine–Russia conflict, bypassing NATO and the EU to center himself as the indispensable dealmaker. This gesture may not have reshaped the geopolitical landscape, but portrays Trump as the man who can solve unsolvable problems by means of leverage and instinct.

This kind of ‘victorious propositions’—so to speak—are often short-lived or fragile. Trump’s approach to the North Korean dispute, oscillating between ‘fire and fury’ threats and warm handshakes with Kim Jong-un, produced historic photo-ops, but no positive outcomes towards a sustained denuclearization process. In Afghanistan, his sudden overtures to the Taliban led to a peace deal that was more an exit strategy than political leadership. Diplomacy, in Trump’s world, is measured in public perceptions, and not real outcomes.

What makes this playbook difficult to classify is precisely its improvisational nature. The consistency with which Trump applies his ‘CEO logic’ to international affairs suggests that, whether improvised or spontaneous, it ishis doctrine. Trump may not have invented transactional foreign policy, but he has certainly made it his signature: unpredictable, personalized and always performance-driven.

Conclusion: The CEO-in-chief of America

Trump’s second term has not merely revisited his first-term instincts; it has redefined them into a full-blown governing philosophy. Foreign policy, for Trump, is not a matter of alliances or shared values, but a cost-benefit analysis. Countries are not partners; they are clients or competitors. Treaties are contracts, and contracts can be rewritten. Diplomacy is not a dialogue, but a deal from which decision-makers are allowed to walk away once it does no longer work.

This CEO-style vision of the US in the present context has delivered some visible short-term gains: trade imbalances have narrowed, individual deals have been struck, and some adversaries have been pressured into concessions. But those wins come at a cost, this is, the erosion of multilateral frameworks, alienated allies, and a shrinking reservoir of global goodwill. By replacing predictability with personality, and institutions with improvisation, Trump has made US foreign policy more agile, but also more fragile.

The bigger question is what comes next. Can a superpower sustain itself on deal-making alone? Can a country, which has been built on alliances, afford to address diplomatic relationships as transactional? Under the Trump Administration, the US is not being governed, but managed, branded, and marketed like a business empire. Trump does not consider himself the political administrator of global stability, but as the ultimate businessman. He is the CEO-in-chief of America Inc.