By Georgios Koukakis, Secretary General & Senior Researcher of KEDISA
The Global War On Terrorism (GWOT) that was initiated in 2001 by President George W. Bush is without doubt a major milestone in U.S. foreign policy. In 2025, President Donald Trump initiated a new GWOT (Global War On Tariffs) which will most probably be another milestone not only in U.S. foreign policy but in world politics as well. Although these two wars might seem completely different, they are similar in the way that they both aim at addressing the United States’ most pressing national security threat at the time, in the context of the perceived strategic competition. The purpose of this article is to explain the on-going U.S. foreign policy under President Trump’s second administration (Trump 2.0) which has led to the imposition of increased tariffs on a large number of actors such as China, India and the EU. The main argument is that to fully understand U.S. foreign policy, someone must take into consideration the way it is affected by national security objectives and the perceived strategic competition, as these two factors are the main drivers of it.
