Hal Brands, Columnist

This Isn’t How You Deal With Free Riders

Trump’s right that fellow democracies have taken advantage, but that system had a lot of benefits for America.

August 7, 2025 at 9:00 AM UTC

Hal Brands is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and the Henry Kissinger Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.

Trade warrior.
Photographer: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Image

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With high tariffs and asymmetric trade deals, President Donald Trump is remaking the global economy. He’s also re-engineering US global leadership. Trump’s gamble is that his strategy will recharge US power and rebalance key relationships. He may simply rupture a democratic community America still badly needs.

Trump’s policies mark the close of a post-1945 era in which Washington bore unequal burdens in support of free-world allies, and the onset of a period in which America extracts benefits more aggressively than ever before.