By: Clemens Chay
The following excerpt is from Chapter 2 — Building in the Rupture: The World’s New Alignments of ORF Global Quarterly: Disruption and Recalibration.
Less than a year after Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney declared that Canada’s old relationship with the United States (US)—anchored in deep economic integration and close security cooperation—was “over,” he delivered a forceful message at Davos in January 2026. He argued that the “fiction” of the international rules-based order, in which powerful states exempt themselves at will and trade rules are “enforced asymmetrically,” had been laid bare. The “bargain,” as he described it—an American-led order underwriting a stable financial system, collective security, and the multilateral frameworks long relied upon by middle powers—was now in “rupture.”
These strong words follow a shock delivered by US President Donald Trump shortly after taking office in January 2025: a declaration of American “economic independence” through the introduction of “Liberation Day” tariffs in April, imposing a 10-percent baseline rate on all countries and subjecting those with trade surpluses vis- à-vis the US to sharply higher rates. Jarring as it was, the move should not have come as a surprise—it flowed directly from the “America First” policies Trump had initiated during his first term, from January 2017 to January 2021, when his administration framed its foreign policy doctrine as “principled realism.” Whereas that first term tested the boundaries of the liberal order, his second has challenged them more aggressively, explicitly linking economic policy to national security under the rubric addressing “unfair and unbalanced trade.” This framing has provided justification for tariffs imposed not only against rivals, but also against some of the US’s closest allies.
Trump’s unreliability as a guarantor of the liberal order has become a generative force in its own right. His first term catalysed smaller groupings anchored in a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” framework, while his second, still unfolding, has not only accelerated those minilateral initiatives, but also pushed allies, and in some cases adversaries, into lateral arrangements with partners they might previously have considered unlikely or unnecessary. The reality is that “America First” under the Trump administration has functioned as a structural force rather than empty rhetoric—one that has prompted state actors to exercise agency by prioritising their own national interests.
A year into Donald Trump's second term, the international order long underwritten by the United States is visibly under strain. Learn more about how "America First" has functioned as a structural force, and what is being built in its place in ORF Global Quarterly: Disruption and Recalibration.