Of the many savage ironies of the Trump administration, perhaps the greatest is the ever-diminishing stature of the United States—despite the president’s desire to make the country great again. MAGA was always something of a misnomer. As a modern-day Sun King, Trump has always believed that he is the state. If America somehow manages to shine, it’s really because of the light that reflects off the president’s bronzed brow. MAGA ultimately boils down to MTGA: Make Trump Great Again.

The preening president believes that relevance is measured by how often his image is in the public eye and the frequency with which foreign leaders pay him obeisance. Toward those ends, he has wielded tariffs like a whip to keep other countries in line. He has attacked the relatively weak (Venezuela), piggybacked on the military actions of others (striking Iran after Israel had already initiated the conflict), and threatened to seize largely undefended territory (Greenland). He has grandiosely promised to end wars—quickly by himself rather than patiently with trained negotiators.

Trump is constantly in the news, and so is the United States. But don’t mistake coverage for relevance. In less than a year, Trump has steered the United States to the margins. In different circumstances, a more modest global role for the United States would be welcome. But Trump has managed to increase America’s profile in all the wrong places and decrease its influence where a little help from a cooperative Washington could go a long way.

Forget about MAGA. Forget even about MTGA. Under Trump, the conversation is shifting to MAUI.

Trump and his cronies are Making America Ultimately Irrelevant.

Missing in Action

The most resonant symbol of the United States, during this second reign of Donald Trump, is an empty chair.

The Trump administration will not likely send anyone to attend the next international gathering of climate leaders in Brazil in November. That’s really no surprise. There were no U.S. delegates at key UN climate meetings in February in China and June in Germany. Trump closed the Office of Global Change at the State Department and fired all the climate negotiators. The flat-earthers that the administration has assigned to purge all references to climate change and delete funding for programs that address the great existential crisis of our time are staying home where they can’t disrupt adult conversations.

America is absent as well from the global dialogue on human rights. It withdrew from the UN Human Rights Council. Worse, last month, the Trump administration announced that it would not participate in the Universal Periodic Review, which is an assessment of each country’s human rights record. The only other country that has opted out of this global standard is Israel. The administration is determined to destroy not only institutions but the very nervous system of human rights.

In general, with his emphasis on “America First,” Trump has given the middle finger to international law. He invited Russian leader Vladimir Putin, under warrant for war crimes from the International Criminal Court, to the United States and gave him the red-carpet treatment. The administration is opening up access to mining corporations to potential deep sea deposits, a clear violation of customary international law. Its proposal to remove all Palestinians from Gaza would constitute a crime against humanity.

Many of the worst global actors—countries, corporations, individuals—have applauded Trump’s actions. The positive responses of billionaire Elon Musk and the oil giants are not surprising. But who could have imagined that the United States would now find itself grouped with countries like Russia, North Korea, and Nicaragua, all of whom despise the liberal international order? The rest of the world is continuing to abide by the rules, for a mixture of moral and pragmatic reasons. But the scofflaw effect, where by an influential violator of norms inspires similar transgressions, could magnify the importance of Trump’s unilateral decisions.

Outlaws play an outsized role in American culture—think Jesse James and Jeffrey Epstein. But again, notoriety should not be conflated with actual influence. If Trump thinks that withdrawing from the Paris Climate accord somehow makes America more relevant, he’d have to argue that the other three non-ratifiers—Iran, Libya, Yemen—are the most influential actors in the world. Spoiler alert: they aren’t. The United States has now joined these countries in the global time-out corner.

Irrelevant in War

In his quixotic pursuit of a Nobel Peace Prize, Trump has claimed that he has resolved seven global wars: Israel and Iran, Rwanda and Democratic Republic of the Congo, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Thailand and Cambodia, India and Pakistan, Egypt and Ethiopia, and Serbia and Kosovo.

In reality, Trump either played no significant role in ending the hostilities (Armenia and Azerbaijan), the conflict isn’t over (Rwanda and DRC), or there really wasn’t a war to resolve (Egypt and Ethiopia). In the case of Kashmir, Trump’s mistaken assertion that he was instrumental in ending the crisis has actually led to a rupture in U.S. relations with India.

Trump refers to these other conflicts to distract attention from the quite obvious fact that he hasn’t fulfilled his campaign promise to end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

In Ukraine, Trump has marginalized the United States by failing to apply pressure on the instigator of the conflict, Russia. Trump’s multiple dalliances with Putin, most recently in Alaska, have only emboldened the Russian leader to increase his aerial onslaught of Ukrainian cities, to strike at targets in western Ukraine including a U.S. factory, and to test NATO defenses with drone overflights of Poland and Romania. Trump has refused to follow through on his threat of secondary sanctions against Russian fossil fuel importers. So, the war has not only continued but intensified.

Meanwhile, Israel has ignored calls for ceasefires and pressed ahead with its ground assault in Gaza. Trump has done nothing to restrain the hand of his friend, Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu. U.S. military assistance flows uninterrupted into Israel. The previously mild U.S. criticisms of Israeli settlement policy in the West Bank have disappeared. The only pressure that Trump has applied, at least in the form of condemnations, has been against Hamas.

Having promised to end both wars, the Trump administration has taken to complaining that diplomatic solutions may just not be possible in the case of Gaza and not worth investing any further energy in negotiating in the case of Ukraine.

And in Peace

At home, the Trump administration has been busy destroying the foundation of the country’s reputation for research and innovation. The steep cuts in funding for scientific research are rippling through academia, medicine, and the economy.

At universities, the loss of funding and attacks by the Trump administration have led as many as three out of every four college faculty to look for jobs outside the country. “The result is a reverse brain drain that has not been seen since European scientists sought refuge on U.S. shores before and during World War II,” according to the Christian Science Monitor. America’s loss is Europe and China’s gain.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s research facility, the National Institutes for Health, the National Science Foundation—all have been gutted. The assault on science as already claimed “victories” in the shutdown of mRNA research into new vaccines that could address not only infectious diseases but cancer and chronic illnesses, leaving the country dangerously vulnerable. Forget about Ukraine and Gaza: Trump can genuinely claim to have ended the war on cancer by cutting off the supply of research grants.

The United States was once a mecca for scientists all over the world. Under Trump, America is becoming a career dead end. And even if students from around the world want to study here, the administration has made it far more difficult to get a visa. An estimated drop of 150,000 new international students at universities this fall will not only hurt those institutions but will cost local economies “as much as $7 billion in spending and more than 60,000 jobs.”

These self-inflicted wounds will outlive Trump himself. Even if subsequent administrations restore funding, the reputational harm has been done. Brain drains are hard to reverse, and other countries are more than happy to take up the mantle as centers of research.

But wait: haven’t Trump’s tariffs made America more relevant not less? Virtually every country in the world is trying to swing deals with Washington in order to get back in the country’s good graces.

Don’t be fooled by the displays of obsequiousness. In reality, the rest of the world is surreptitiously diversifying their trade and investment portfolios so as to reduce their exposure to the whims of the United States. It’s not just Canada and Brazil. This hedging is part of a longer trend that the “Liberation Day” tariffs have only intensified.

In 2000, the United States was the top trading partner for over 80 percent of economies. Today, its share has shrunk to 30 percent, with China emerging as the top trading partner for more than 120 nations. The U.S. share of global imports is about 16 percent. By contrast, the European continent and the three largest Asian economies combined account for 38 percent of total demand for imports. According to the Global Trade Alert, if the U.S. were to halt all imports, America’s key trading partners could recover all their lost exports within five years.

America’s soft power is evaporating. Its diplomatic ranks have been decimated. Its research base is being rapidly dismantled. This is not a country that has become “tired of winning” but one that is getting dangerously accustomed to losing.

It was appalling back in the day when the United States dominated every global conversation. It turns out that the opposite—America the dispensable power—is equally dangerous. Like a D-list celebrity, the United States is the focus of media attention not out of adulation or respect. It’s just the rubbernecking associated with a train wreck in progress.

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