What if Trump is reelected in 2024?

Nevertheless, the fight to protect U.S. alliances will be much more severe than last time and much more in the open.

Michael Green

The author is CEO of the U.S. Studies Centre at the University of Sydney and Henry A. Kissinger Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

When Joe Biden won the 2020 Presidential election and Donald Trump was subsequently impeached by Congress for his role in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capital, it seemed that the Trump era in American politics was finally closing. However, early polls in the Republican primary race for President now suggest that Trump could make a comeback. While the former President has been impeached twice, faces multiple federal and state legal charges, and has negative ratings from a significant majority of American voters, he remains deeply popular within the Republican Party itself. His path back to the Presidency is narrow, rugged, and strewn with legal landmines. But there is a path. If the half dozen Republicans running against him all stay in the race through the early primaries next spring in Iowa and New Hampshire, then he will start collecting a strong lead in primary votes before a single opponent can amass enough votes to stop him as happened in 2016. Despite the cascade of legal rulings likely to hit him in the months ahead, the odds of Trump winning the Republican nomination have to be about 50/50 right now.

Winning the general election would be much tougher for Trump given the strong wall of negative views towards him. But if the economy worsens (looking ok for now) or Joe Biden starts to appear too old for the job (a more dangerous drag for the Democrats), then Trump could manage to lose the popular vote but still win just enough of the Electoral College votes to slide into the Presidency again (for those not familiar, the U.S. President is chosen by a majority of the electors from the states they win and large states with small populations that lean Republican like Montana tend to have more electors per capita than largely populated states like New York or California that lean Democratic). Personally, I would give Trump a 20% chance of winning in the general election if he gets that far, but in 2016 his own polling expert reportedly only gave him a 30% chance the night before the election ... and he won.

So, while a second Trump term still seems unlikely, it is nevertheless time to ask what it would mean for Korea.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump makes his way inside the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse in New York on April 4 to answer criminal charges that threaten to throw the 2024 White House race into turmoil. [AFP/YONHAP]

If re-elected, Donald Trump would again come into office with a belligerent and nationalistic but largely incoherent worldview. His stump speeches today are rambling attacks on his legal and political enemies, replete with racism, misogyny, childish name-calling, and pro-wrestling-like entertainment value that his supporters love. He has expressed mountains of anger and resentment but almost no vision for what the United States or the world should look like.

One exception could be his lingering animosity towards U.S. bases in Japan, Korea, and NATO. Since the 1980s he has argued that these allies are “ripping-off” the United States. In his simplistic imagining, Korea should be “paying” the United States more for deploying U.S. forces on the peninsula by “buying” more goods and giving the United States a trade surplus. Trump is not bothered by the national security arguments since 1941 that dictate forward presence keeps the peace and the enemy far from the United States or by international economic theory in which foreign direct investment and intermediate trade matter far more than narrow bilateral trade deficits. But Trump began making his arguments in the mid-1980s and those Americans resentful of globalization responded.

Trump’s negative view of U.S. forces in Korea is further compounded by his self-proclaimed “love affair” with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. In fact, one of Trump’s current legal troubles stems in part from his decision to hide letters from Kim as personal souvenirs, despite the well-established fact that they are classified and U.S. government property. Trump’s approach to the Korean peninsula is therefore both inappropriately transactional and deeply narcissistic as he fancies himself a transformational historical figure who can sign a peace treaty ending the Korean War and saving America money by pulling troops home.

In his one term as president, Trump frequently challenged his national security advisors and Republican allies in Congress to explain why he shouldn’t just pull U.S. troops off the Korean peninsula. One advisor told me this was a weekly occurrence throughout his presidency. Trump even acknowledged that Vladimir Putin advised him to do so before the first summit with Kim in Singapore in 2018. Trump’s most senior former advisors have warned in private and public that he will try to pull troops out of Korea if re-elected.

When Trump began musing about withdrawing troops as President the first time, a coalition of Republican Senators and Trump’s own national security team aligned to block him through quiet delaying actions and legislative maneuvers. A large majority of Republicans in Congress disagree with Trump on foreign policy and polls show that more Americans than ever support the U.S.-Korea alliance, so Trump faced considerable headwinds within his own party and administration. Abe Shinzo also played a key role in convincing Trump to keep U.S. troops in Korea over multiple dinners and games of golf (Abe may have been unpopular in Korea but was perhaps the best friend Korea had at the time).

Many of these same national security advisors will not return to a second Trump administration since they broke with the former President publicly or resigned in the immediate aftermath of January 6. Moreover, Trump’s most loyal henchmen have formed a shadow government in new think tanks such as the America First Institute to be better prepared to seize the reins of power than they were last time. My guess is that there are not enough of them to overwhelm the Congress or the mainstream officials or Trump appointees who would run the Pentagon, State Department, and NSC. Moreover, Trump himself remains a dilettante when it comes to foreign policy — more interested in showy announcements and angry speeches than following through on his grandiose gestures. Nevertheless, the fight to protect U.S. alliances will be much more severe than last time and much more in the open. And it will be a fight between the President and his own administration and political party.

Korea will have friends in Australia, Japan, Canada, and NATO — and in the Congress, media, think tanks and the American public. Korea also has a good story to tell on investment in the U.S., shared democratic values, and (thanks to President Yoon) more proactive participation in regional diplomacy. These attributes may not matter much to Trump personally, but they will matter a lot to most senior officials who would follow him into government and want to make America more secure and prosperous.

We will see what happens. But if it looks like Trump is heading for the Republican nomination, I will swallow my bitter disappointment and devote some more columns to thinking through how Korea and other U.S. allies should get ready … something everyone failed to do last time.