Trump's foreign policy is, at its essence, about "making money for America" — not exporting values, not upholding order, not consolidating alliances, but treating each diplomatic relationship as one more business deal to be cut. A businessman-politician, running a money-making diplomacy. Once everything is measured in dollars, it all becomes simple.
This businessman's logic is not new — Trump practiced it throughout his first term. But in the second term, with institutional constraints further eroded, it has grown more naked: from demanding tolls for passage through the Strait of Hormuz, to using a bridge Canada paid to build as a negotiating chip, to taking over the sale of Venezuela's oil, to replacing the security-alliance framework on NATO with a "membership fee" framework. An entire foreign policy is being turned into a corporate acquisition plan.
The Strait of Hormuz Tollbooth — A Standard Trump Trial Balloon
In July 2026, Trump proposed a 20% transit fee on goods passing through the Strait of Hormuz. The plan was legally untenable — the strait lies in high-seas waters, and international law does not recognize the unilateral imposition of tolls. On a practical level, too, Iran was already the first party to set up a "toll system" on the strait.
But its real significance lay not in whether the toll could be collected, but in what Trump did with the proposal: he was testing whether American military power could be directly monetized. In his transactional worldview, America is less a beacon of capitalism and democracy than a stakeholder in a business deal.
Within a day, Trump dropped the toll plan and instead promised that America would receive another form of "payment" — trade and investment deals with the Gulf states. He wrote on social media:
"Based on productive conversations with Middle Eastern leaders, I have decided to replace the 20% American reimbursement fee with the trade and investment deals that the Gulf states will strike with the United States."
The Pentagon has not released a specific cost for the war with Iran, but independent estimates already exceed $40 billion and continue to climb. The core message Trump is likely trying to convey is this: for a conflict he started and has so far been unable to end, America must get commensurate returns. Ordinary Americans feel the economic burden of this conflict every time they pull up to a gas pump — and he is searching for a framing that makes voters feel the price was worth it.
The Canadian Bridge — Betting With an Ally's Infrastructure
In February 2026, Trump demanded that the United States split ownership of the Gordie Howe Bridge — connecting Detroit and Windsor — fifty-fifty with Canada, even though Canada had funded the bridge's construction.
The bridge's opening was delayed as a result. The eventual resolution: for the next 15 years, Canada will share the net profits from tolls with an economic development fund. But Canadian Prime Minister Carney admitted in an interview:
"There won't be much net revenue to share."
This is the signature of Trump-style negotiation: he does not care how much he actually gets; he cares that the fact of having "gotten" something can be taken home and touted. The bridge's opening has been pushed to July 27. Canada's concession bought not a win-win deal but a 15-year stream of uncertain revenue-sharing — and even the ultimate beneficiary is discounted.
Venezuela — From Anti-Dictatorship to Selling Oil
In early 2026, the Trump administration authorized the U.S. military to capture former President Maduro and transfer him to the United States to stand trial. But the moves that followed forced outside observers to re-examine the operation's real purpose: remnants of the Maduro regime remain in power under the Trump administration's supervision, while the Trump administration has taken over the sale of Venezuela's oil resources.
Concrete details about the scale and scope of these oil sales have been hard to come by. Even Republican members of Congress have voiced concern about the lack of transparency — especially after the country was struck by a devastating earthquake.
Meanwhile, opposition leader María Corina Machado — the political figure who dedicated her Nobel Peace Prize to Trump before the U.S. military moved — has been largely sidelined in the process that followed. The New York Times reported that Secretary of State Rubio is exercising a high degree of control over the country from afar, through the incumbent regime.
Elliott Abrams, who served as Special Representative for Venezuela during Trump's first term, wrote in The Free Press:
"The emphasis has consistently been on seeking investment in Venezuela, above all on raising oil output, while economic recovery and democracy are pushed into the remote future. This is a self-contradictory policy."
Ukraine — How Rare-Earth Interests Changed the Attitude
Trump's shift in attitude toward Ukraine can be summed up in a single sentence: "We now have an interest there."
At last week's NATO meeting, Trump said Ukraine should be allowed to manufacture Patriot interceptor missiles — surprising both American companies and Zelensky. His stated rationale was not the defense of Ukraine's sovereignty, but rather:
"We now have a bit of an interest in the country, because we own some land there, but we own the mineral rights. It is one of the richest parts of the world, and among the most abundant in rare-earth resources anywhere on the globe."
Behind these words lies the joint investment fund agreement the United States and Ukraine signed in 2025. But Trump's reading of that deal differs entirely from Ukraine's — Kyiv has consistently insisted that it retains full ownership of its natural resources. Trump understands it as "we bought property in Ukraine."
NATO — The Security Logic of a Membership-Fee Framework
Trump's chief grievance with NATO has always been that "Europe isn't paying its dues." His problem is not with European strategic autonomy or the effectiveness of the security mechanism — what he cares about is why America is paying while others are not paying enough. The framework itself is commercial: security is not a shared responsibility but a service fee to be divided by quota.
He used pressure to force European countries to raise defense spending, but this produced a consequence that has not been sufficiently discussed: European countries are no longer as deferential to the United States as they once were. CNN's Fareed Zakaria observed:
"We have set off a chain reaction, and over time Americans will begin to miss the NATO of the past — not because it was fair, but because it was the most successful security system the world has ever known, and America sat at its center."
Trump has replaced the logic of security with the logic of business, but the price of the business logic is this: when customers pay more, their voice grows with it. That is not the outcome Trump anticipated.
Tariffs — The Paradox of the Core Policy Tool
Tariffs are the cornerstone of Trump's trade and economic policy. But a tariff is, in effect, a tax borne by American consumers — virtually all economists agree that tariff costs ultimately show up as higher prices on goods.
Trump insists that foreign countries are footing the bill. Meanwhile, the U.S. government is refunding tariffs that the Supreme Court ruled should not have been collected — more than $49 billion in June 2026 alone. Lawsuits by companies and individuals demanding refunds of unlawful tariffs are multiplying.
A Reusable Analytical Framework
The core value of this analysis by Lingshi Xiantan (a commentary account on Weibo) lies in offering a foundational logic for understanding Trump's foreign policy:
A Three-Layer Operating Model of Businessman Diplomacy
- Discover value — identify the assets within a diplomatic relationship that can be "monetized" (rights of strait passage, infrastructure ownership, mineral resources, defense obligations)
- Appraise and set a price — convert the asset into a specific sum or a share of the proceeds (a 20% toll, a split of bridge profits, rare-earth rights, a defense-spending percentage)
- Close at a discount and declare a "win" — the concessions actually obtained are smaller than the initial demand, but the talking point is always "we got it"
The framework also exposes the model's systemic limits: book gains diverge from real gains; a calculus cannot capture incalculable value (alliance trust, institutional stability, allies' deference); and short-term "booking" replaces long-term "investing" — every diplomatic deal pursues immediately visible returns, surrendering strategic assets that take time to accumulate.