The anointment of Donald Trump as the Republican Presidential candidate raises some issues about future EU-US relations should he be elected to the highest office of his country.

First his atrocious treatment of Muslims. He has already fallen flat on his face after being severely mauled by the parents of a Muslim American soldier who died in Baghdad. They made the real sacrifice for America, Trump has only lived it off in comfort.

Two outstanding issues stand out in the realm of foreign policy: American commitment to NATO and the defence of Western Europe and its promotion of human rights.

The main slogan on the third day of the Cleveland Republican national convention was “Make America First Again”.  In American history this is a very loaded phrase. It smacks of the America First Movement created in 1940 and dissolved a year later after Pearl Harbour and the US entry into the war.

The ‘America First Movement’ reflected a remarkable shift in American public opinion between the two world wars when around 70 per cent of Americans began to believe that their country’s involvement in World War I was a mistake.

Rumblings of another war in Europe convinced a majority of Americans that the rise of Nazism did not necessarily pose a threat to the US and for that reason they supported isolationism.

Trump’s Cleveland speech dwelt on internal US affairs. He set his sights on immigration, crime, law and order, terrorism, a proposal to lower taxes ostensibly to promote investment and jobs. His assessment of these challenges was one-sided and biased as befits a campaign speech and a politician harvesting the vote market.  

Elsewhere, Trump has made it clear that the USA will no longer “preach” human rights to others. But if the US walks away from them, only the EU and perhaps a handful of like-minded countries will be left to promote the cause of human rights. HRs will suffer everywhere, leading to untold consequences, perhaps also contributing to larger movements of peoples.

He is only partially right when he claims that America is unfit to “preach” to others because its own domestic human rights situation is questionable. It is like saying that a chain smoking doctor who cannot kick the habit has no right to tell others about the hazards of smoking.

In Cleveland, Trump dwelt less on foreign policy but what he said should set many minds thinking.  He wants to promote a “fair trade policy” that protects American jobs and to “stand up to countries that cheat”. He wants to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Area Agreement (NAFTA) with Mexico – apart from the wall he wants Mexicans to build themselves to seal US borders against immigrants and crime.

Trump does not mention that Mexico, the second largest economy in Latin America, has benefitted American investors and exports. Of the estimated 7.1 million US jobs supported by goods exports to the world, a million depend on continued exports to Mexico.

American producers in search of profit, the highest value in the neo-liberal ideology, or those facing unbearable rising costs have moved to Mexico where they have continued to produce and provide Mexicans with jobs. These in turn have used parts of their income on consuming American goods. Go build a wall and isolate Mexico!

Trump lambasts China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) and for flouting intellectual property rights. It is on the point alone that he may be right. He is silent on the millions of American jobs that depend on exports to China, the American investments in China and says very little about how the US would be able to handle North Korea without China and without having to go to war.

What about the US-China Strategic Partnership? What about the fate of climate change politics? Does China not have a singular role in that?

Trump wants to completely rebuild America’s “depleted military” and countries that are being protected at a massive cost will be asked to pay their fair share. He has already stated that NATO is obsolete because it does not cover terrorism (which it does) and because the members of the alliance are not paying their fair share.

But what would his “America First” approach do to Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines. Many are asking what would happen in the event that the USA walks away from them – or they are forced to walk away from it and to pursue their own military build ups and nuclear deterrence.

He has promised to defeat ISIS (DAESH) whose rise he blames on his Democratic opponent Hilary Clinton carefully stopping from mentioning that it is already much depleted or that it was the Iraq and Middle East debacles of his Republican predecessor George Bush (who incidentally has not endorsed Mr Trump) who is mostly to blame for opening this Middle Eastern Pandora’s box.

The USA has the largest economy in the world, $18.6 trillion dollars equivalent to a quarter of the world’s output compared to China’s $11.4 trillion and Japan’s $4.4 trillion. It is losing relative strength because other economies are growing fast but it still possesses enormous reserves on which it can count to mend its present deficits. The finest reserve is the American people. Will they support Trump’s defeatist, isolationist and ultimately whacky political vision?

Prof. Pace is the Director of the Institute for European Studies at the University of Malta