His foreign policy has been marked by repeated praise and support of neo-nationalist and authoritarian strongmen and criticism of democratically-led governments. Trump has cited China's president Xi Jinping, Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte, Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Turkey's president Tayyip Erdoğan, King Salman of Saudi Arabia, Italy's prime minister Giuseppe Conte, Brazil's president Jair Bolsonaro, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, and Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán as examples of good leaders.
In April 2019, the House Oversight Committee issued subpoenas seeking financial details from Trump's banks, Deutsche Bank and Capital One, and his accounting firm, Mazars USA. In response, Trump sued the banks, Mazars, and committee chairman Elijah Cummings to prevent the disclosures. In May, DC District Court judge Amit Mehta ruled that Mazars must comply with the subpoena, and judge Edgardo Ramos of the Southern District Court of New York ruled that the banks must also comply. Trump's attorneys appealed the rulings, arguing that Congress was attempting to usurp the "exercise of law-enforcement authority that the Constitution reserves to the executive branch".
More InfoAccording to Michael Barkun, the Trump campaign was remarkable for bringing fringe ideas, beliefs, and organizations into the mainstream. During his presidential campaign, Trump was accused of pandering to white supremacists. He retweeted open racists, and repeatedly refused to condemn David Duke, the Ku Klux Klan or white supremacists, in an interview on CNN's State of the Union, saying he would first need to "do research" because he knew nothing about Duke or white supremacists. Duke himself enthusiastically supported Trump throughout the 2016 primary and election, and has said he and like-minded people voted for Trump because of his promises to "take our country back".
More InfoTrump is a skeptic of multilateral trade deals, as he believes they indirectly incentivize unfair trade practices that then tend to go unpoliced. He favors bilateral trade deals, as they allow one party to pull out if the other party is believed to be behaving unfairly. Trump favors neutral or positive balances of trade over negative balances of trade, also known as a "trade deficit". Trump adopted his current skeptical views toward trade liberalization in the 1980s, and he sharply criticized NAFTA during the Republican primary campaign in 2015. He withdrew the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations, imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, and launched a trade war with China by sharply increasing tariffs on 818 categories (worth $50 billion) of Chinese goods imported into the U.S. On several occasions, Trump has said incorrectly that these import tariffs are paid by China into the U.S. Treasury.
More InfoThe Trump administration has taken a harsher approach than previous administrations regarding migrant detentions, by allowing no exemptions for detention unlike the George W. Bush and Obama administrations. While the Obama administration already employed a high level of detentions and deportations for migrants, the Trump administration took it to a significantly higher level. In April 2018, Trump ordered an end to the "catch and release" policy which released illegal immigrants from detention pending a court hearing.
More InfoStarting in spring 2020, Trump began to sow doubts about the election, repeatedly warning that the election would be "rigged" and claiming without evidence that the expected widespread use of mail balloting would produce "massive election fraud". When the House of Representatives voted for a $25 billion grant to the post office, to allow them to handle the expected surge in mail voting, Trump said he would not agree to the grant because he wanted to prevent any increase in voting by mail. In what The New York Times called an "extraordinary breach of presidential decorum", Trump raised the idea on July 30 of delaying the election. He has refused to say whether he will accept the results of the election if he loses.
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