Donald Trump may never win his coveted Nobel Peace Prize, but there is one thing that he may well achieve during his second term: being a great 19th-century president.
At the beginning of his term, I already remarked that his foreign policy seemed to be straight out of the 19th century. This was not conjecture or an analogy, but rather a straightforward observation. Trump himself made clear that he not only admired but sought to emulate 19th-century U.S. presidents such as William McKinley and Andrew Jackson. And during his second inaugural address, he harkened back to the late 19th century by saying that the U.S. “will once again consider itself a growing nation—one that increases our wealth, expands our territory.”
That Trump looks to the past for his inspiration is no surprise. After all, he began his political ascent with the “Make America Great Again” catchphrase that became the name of his movement. At the time, some thought that the “again” period referred to by MAGA was either the 1980s—when Trump himself rose to public prominence and when the MAGA slogan was first used by Ronald Reagan—or the 1950s, when the U.S. was clearly the dominant power in the world given that all the other great powers were materially devastated by World War II.
But it is now evident that for Trump, “again” means the period from 1890 to 1913, just before the outbreak of World War I. In fact, he himself has claimed that the U.S. was at its richest “from 1870 to 1913.” While U.S. per capita income is clearly higher now than it was at that time, even when adjusted for inflation, there is no doubt that the late 19th century was a time of high growth, as the period of industrial takeoff has historically been for nations that achieve it. Ignoring that historical aspect, high growth is what Trump desires for the U.S. now.
Nine months into his second term, it is clearer than ever that Trump wants to take the United States back to the late 19th century, both domestically and in its relations abroad. So how is he doing in that regard?
Let’s start with the obvious: tariffs. From his “Liberation Day” on April 2, when he unveiled a schedule of tariff rates to be immediately imposed on nations around the world, to his latest threat to impose 100 percent tariffs on China, Trump has held true to being a self-proclaimed “tariff man.” During last year’s presidential election campaign, he not only repeatedly referenced tariffs but also claimed they were a key part of U.S. trade policy when the country was, in his estimation, great: the 1890s, during McKinley’s presidency.
For Trump, the fact that sky-high tariffs go against the postwar global trend toward free trade is not beside the point—it is the point. He considers the U.S. decision after World War II to unilaterally lower trade barriers a mistake and sees tariffs as a tool of international leverage, a means of promoting U.S. industry and a source of revenue to enable the tax cuts that he and congressional Republicans pushed through in July.
There is nothing new about Trump’s policies. They are throwbacks, as the “again” in MAGA makes clear.
But Trump doesn’t only want a 19th-century trade policy that reestablishes the kind of tariff wall that surrounded the U.S. in the late 1800s. He also seems to desire a 19th-century monetary policy. He has made no secret of his disdain for the idea of central bank independence and chafes at the power held by the Federal Reserve, a creation of the early 20th century that really didn’t gain full independence until the 1950s. Trump seems to want to go back, if not fully to an era of free banking, then at least to a time when the Fed’s ability to set monetary policy was constrained. In a prior era, that constraint was the U.S. adherence to the Gold Standard. Today, it would be Trump’s preferences.
The 19th-century flavor of Trump’s presidency extends beyond economic policy. It can also be seen in his desire to change the name of the Defense Department to the War Department, as it was known from 1789 until the years after World War II. That decision signals a return in strategic emphasis to the 19th century, when the primary role of the U.S. military—besides during the Civil War—was to fight a series of wars against the Indigenous peoples of the continent. Trump is now similarly orienting the U.S. military toward operating on U.S. territory, and specifically in American cities. In effect, he sees the military not as an instrument to protect the U.S. from foreign threats, but as an instrument for shaping the country itself, in terms of its racial and national composition. That is taking a page straight from the 19th-century American playbook.
To the extent that Trump sees the military as a means of projecting power abroad, it is to orient U.S. foreign policy on the Western Hemisphere in a renewal of the Monroe Doctrine that defined much of the country’s 19th-century foreign policy. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth noted as much in his recent speech to the U.S. military’s top officers, emphasizing “the threats we face in our hemisphere.” While former President Joe Biden was faulted, including by me, for neglecting Latin America, the Trump administration has adopted a laser-sharp focus on the region.
Some of the motives for that are constructive, if controversial, such as the U.S. once again offering a financial bailout to Argentina. Other policies are less constructive, such as the imposition of tariffs on Brazil due to Trump’s displeasure over the conviction of the country’s former president and close Trump ally, Jair Bolsonaro. Others are seen by most experts as illegal, such as the lethal airstrikes on boats that the Trump administration accuses of trafficking drugs off the coast of Venezuela. These policies are not what analysts had in mind when they called for the U.S. to pay closer attention to its neighborhood.
One area where Trump has seemed to have cooled his 19th-century ardor is territorial acquisition. During the post-election transition period and the early days of his second presidency, Trump spoke boldly of making Canada the 51st American state, repossessing the Panama Canal and annexing Greenland, without ruling out the use of force if necessary for the latter two. Since then, he seems to have forgotten those declarations and has even framed the claims on Canada as having been jokes. As for the Panama Canal, though Trump is no longer talking about reacquiring sovereignty over it, his administration is supporting efforts by Panama to transfer control of two key ports servicing the canal from the Hong Kong-based Chinese firm currently operating them to Western—and preferably U.S.—companies. That said, he has never renounced his claims on the canal or Greenland, meaning he may still return to both ideas at some point.
As for China, while competition between Washington and Beijing is a central feature of 21st-century U.S. foreign policy, Trump’s management of it carries echoes of America’s 19th-century “Open Door” policy. Back then, the U.S. and European powers sought to force Imperial China to allow them to access its domestic market. Trump’s trade war with China may seem like the opposite of an open door, but the goal seems to be the same: compelling China to broker a deal that will grant U.S. firms more access to its enormous domestic market.
The one area where Trump has ended up deviating the most from a 19th-century approach to U.S. foreign policy is in Europe. That, too, represents a shift from the early months of his second term, when he seemed poised to extricate the U.S. from its “entangling alliance” on the continent. But he has since cooled on that stance and seems quite content to keep the United States as a full and active member of the NATO alliance. Indeed, members of his administration have gone so far as to reassert the core NATO commitment to “defend every inch of NATO territory” in light of recent Russian provocations across the region.
As all of this makes clear, there is nothing new about Trump’s policies. They are throwbacks, as the “again” in MAGA makes clear. Trump isn’t seeking to turn the United States into something it has never been. Instead, he is seeking to return it to being something it hasn’t been in a long time—indeed, a much longer time than many observers previously recognized.
Paul Poast is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago and a nonresident fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.