GLOBAL CONCERNS

Trump faces mounting foreign policy challenges

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

New North Korea missile tests. A trade standoff with China. Fresh nuclear tensions with Iran.

President Donald Trump’s foreign policy challenges are mounting around the world, showing the limits of his self-touted ability to make a deal and perhaps the difficulty of focusing primarily on domestic concerns for his “America first” administration.

They’re also forcing him into some contorted positions, for example, backing regime change in Venezuela without any displays of force and saying he’s open to talks with Iran while dispatching an aircraft carrier and bombers to the Middle East.

Staring down high-stakes diplomacy around the world, Trump says his efforts are working.

“We’ve made a decisive break from the failed foreign policy establishment that sacrificed our sovereignty, surrendered our jobs and tied us down to endless foreign wars,” he told supporters at a rally in Florida. “In everything we do, we are now putting America first.”

Still, Trump has plenty of unfinished business. Since taking office, he has specialized in publicly hectoring friendly partners, embracing foes and resisting too much advice. Critics have labeled him an unreliable force, while allies say he has followed through on a promise to disrupt foreign policy norms.

Trump inherited some of his foreign policy problems, such as North Korea, Syria and Afghanistan, but has yet to solve them. And his hands-on approach to North Korea, having the first meetings between a U.S. president and that country’s leader, has not yielded a deal to curtail North Korea’s nuclear missile program.

On other fronts, Trump has turned up the heat. His trade clash with China remains unresolved as he brandishes additional tariff hikes. With Iran, Trump pulled the U.S. out of the nuclear deal that the Obama administration had negotiated along with five other world powers, and he recently increased the pressure, designating Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization and deploying military forces to the Persian Gulf. He said Thursday that he would like to get a call from Iran’s leaders to negotiate.

Cliff Kupchan, chairman of Eurasia Group, described China and Iran as the two most pressing issues for the U.S. But he noted that Trump’s moves are not unexpected.

“With China and Iran, we’re seeing a strategically very predictable president play out his hand,” he said. Still, he said that handling the range of challenges proves that the administration can manage to “walk and chew gum at the same time.”

Speaking to reporters Thursday, Trump rattled through some of the top concerns. He said the U.S. was looking “very seriously right now” at North Korea’s recent military tests. On trade talks with China, he said the U.S. would be fine either way, but said Chinese President Xi Jinping wrote him a “beautiful” letter. And amid a rising clash with Iran, he declared, “we have information that you don’t want to know about.”

Another pressing issue is the economic and political crisis in Venezuela. The United States and other nations have recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as interim president, but a recent effort to encourage an uprising against President Nicolas Maduro failed.