Inside Donald Trump’s plans for the world

It’s almost here — we are one week out from election day. Welcome to US Election Countdown.

Kamala Harris will make her closing argument to voters this evening at Washington’s Ellipse, where Donald Trump gave his infamous speech on January 6 2021. And in about an hour, the Republican will take questions from the press after his own closing argument ignited a firestorm. Before that, let’s get into:

While Trump’s foreign policy 2.0 would have unpredictability at its core, he does have some plans, according to those in his orbit [free to read].

“America first” would be the starting point, with Trump judging Washington’s friends and enemies by the same measure: their trading surplus with the US.

The US’s traditional allies widely anticipate both turbulent relationships with a second Trump White House and being under threat from higher tariffs. Therefore, they expect that bilateral ties would take precedence over multilateral ones — formal international alliances would be pushed to the back burner.

On the campaign trail Trump has pledged to end quickly the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. His running mate, JD Vance, has outlined a frozen conflict between Moscow and Kyiv, with autonomous regions on each side of a demilitarised zone — and Ukraine outside Nato. Kyiv, however, has said that settlement without security guarantees for Ukraine would be tantamount to surrender.

When it comes to Israel, Gaza and Lebanon, people close to Trump insist the ex-president wouldn’t shy away from pressuring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who is hoping for a Trump victory — towards a deal when the time is right. Trump could invite Netanyahu to Washington to tell him to knock it off and push for a ceasefire, said an adviser. How Netanyahu would respond is unclear.

Beyond that, Trump thinks a grand bargain with Israel and Saudi Arabia is the key to long-term regional peace and stability. Israel — along with South Korea, Poland and India — could also be a model for a kind of self-reliant ally Trump would prefer Washington’s partners emulate.

Allies should be on edge, according to Trump’s confidantes. “Predictability is a terrible thing,” Ric Grenell, who is tipped for an important role if the Republican wins, told the FT’s Alec Russell.

Campaign clips: the latest election headlines

Behind the scenes

Just five months ago, Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, boasted about his close ties to Trump and the rightwing think-tank’s ability to influence policy with its Project 2025 should the former president win again.

“I have become personally close to the president,” Roberts told the FT’s James Politi and Alex Rogers.

He proclaimed Trump would implement many of Project 2025’s recommendations, and “usher in the most glorious golden age of conservative reform since Ronald Reagan”.

But now Heritage has found itself frozen out of Trump’s orbit — at least temporarily — over the policy manifesto, which envisions a draconian and radically conservative administration.

Despite the fact that Trump has pledged to carry out some of the plans in Project 2025 — and that it was authored in part by his own former officials — the blueprint has become so toxic that it’s become an easy attack line from Harris. Trump has since tried to distance himself from it.

Close observers of Heritage say its status as a political lightning rod follows its evolution towards domestic populism and foreign policy isolationism. And a lot is at stake for the think-tank right now.

“If Trump wins, all the criticism of Project 2025 aside, Heritage is going to be in a good position. I think if Trump loses, they are going to be blamed a lot,” said Derek Scissors, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, another right-leaning think-tank.

Datapoint

I just spent some time in Wisconsin’s WOW counties (a fun nickname for those of Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington), which form a Republican stronghold in the affluent suburbs of Milwaukee.

These three counties will almost certainly go for Trump, but the Republican party’s vote share has been decreasing steadily for more than a decade as Democrats have chipped away at its margins [free to read].

“The WOW counties are critical,” Ben Wikler, chair of the Democratic party of Wisconsin, told me, because more than 640,000 people live there and “more than any other part of the state, they’ve been swinging from red to purple”.

“Historically, the WOW counties are the Republican vote factory of Wisconsin, and the place where the GOP can cancel out the Democratic extra votes from [state capital] Madison and Milwaukee,” Wikler added.

But now, “the number of Democratic votes coming out of the WOW counties is exploding”.

In 2020, Biden won Wisconsin, a swing state, by just 20,682 votes, meaning a single county could decide the state — and the election.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton took 33.3 per cent, 37 per cent and 27.2 per cent of the vote in the WOW counties, respectively. In 2020, President Joe Biden’s respective share grew to 38.8 per cent, 43.1 per cent and 30.3 per cent.

Viewpoints

• Vote with your ballot, not your life savings, writes David Booth, founder and chair of Dimensional Fund Advisors.

• Regardless of who ends up in the White House, US senator Chris Murphy urges Washington’s foreign policy officials to continue Biden’s work to “repair the damage caused by blind faith in unfettered global markets”.

• Harris is using her remaining time on the campaign trail to court women voters in swing states. Rana Foroohar explains why it’s a smart strategy.

• Oliver Roeder dives into what the polls can’t tell us about the US election and whether obsessing over such data distracts people from the issues at stake. 

• A bunch of macro hedge fund managers are convinced the former president will return to the White House, but Katie Martin warns that the so-called Trump trade is “a bit of a mess”.