“America First” Endures: The Public Roots of Populist Foreign Policy

Abstract: The rise of American populism—particularly the right-wing populist surge represented by Donald Trump—has reshaped the landscape of U.S. domestic politics and foreign policy. This article investigates the core of American populist foreign policy and its public opinion foundation. Theoretically, the “America First” agenda can be conceptualized along three dimensions: anti-multilateralism in the political domain, anti-globalism in the economic domain, and anti–value-based diplomacy in the cultural domain. Empirically, drawing on two nationally representative surveys—the 2020 American National Election Studies (ANES) and the 2022 Chicago Council on Global Affairs (CCGA)—this study employs cross-survey imputation and matching methods to estimate the causal relationships between Americans’ populist orientations in these three dimensions and their specific foreign policy attitudes. The results show that political populism significantly increases isolationist, anti-alliance, and anti-international organization attitudes; economic populism strengthens support for tariffs and trade protectionism; and cultural populism reinforces opposition to democracy promotion, multicultural values, and human rights agendas. The evidence suggests that the formation of U.S. populist foreign policy is not accidental but rooted in broad-based public sentiment and social structures—specifically, the spillover effects of domestic political distrust, economic inequality, and cultural identity anxiety onto foreign policy. A case study of Trump’s second term further confirms the mechanism between populist public opinion and foreign policy preferences. Even after Trump’s departure from office, this populist base, driven by public discontent, is likely to continue shaping U.S. foreign policy toward a more domestically focused orientation.