By Andrew Hammond
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Trump has proven at least a partial exception to most presidents in the modern era who have tended to put predominant emphasis on domestic policy in their first few years of office. To be sure, Trump's sole major legislative success, his corporate tax cuts of 2017, also came during his first three years.
Yet, he has also placed very significant emphasis on foreign policy too during his presidency, from China to North Korea, and Iran to Russia. Not to mention a series of big plays around multilateral trade from the proposed new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement through to pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal with around a dozen other countries in the Asia-Pacific and Americas.
This pattern looks set to continue, and may only intensify. Looking into next year, the United States is for instance hosting next year's G7, which will occupy a significant amount of White House attention, especially with Trump looking to make the event ― potentially at property his family company owns in Miami ― into as big a success as possible.
In placing so much emphasis on foreign policy in his first term, Trump has pre-empted the pattern of most recent second term presidents who increasingly looked overseas after re-election, rather than before.
As world leaders prepare to travel to New York for this month's big event, there are multiple big foreign policy prizes that the Trump team perceives are in play. Yet, in all cases the process remains fragile, and prone to reversal, as the U.S.-Taliban peace talks show.
Take the example of Iran with Trump indicating that there is the chance of a meeting with President Hassan Rouhani. The apparent prize here for the White House is the possibility of Tehran agreeing in the face of growing pressure to a new, tougher nuclear deal that goes beyond the 2015 agreement.
However, while that cannot be ruled out entirely, a breakthrough appears unlikely in the immediate future. Indeed, it is at least just as likely that the tensions with Tehran will grow further in coming weeks.
There are at least two other areas in which Trump see potentially legacy defining agreements. Firstly, North Korea where it remains an open question whether sustained moves toward "denuclearization" of the Korean Peninsula will ultimately prove anything more than a mirage.
Yet, despite all the challenges, Trump is likely to continue his Korea gambit with his re-election campaign on the horizon. This, along with his desire to cement a place in history, means the prize of potentially permanently de-escalating tensions on the world's last Cold War frontier is likely to remain appealing to him.
At the heart of the apparent logjam, right now, between Washington and Pyongyang is not just the vagueness of the commitments agreed in Singapore. There also may still be a fundamental difference between Pyongyang and Washington over what next steps are needed to build confidence.
It was always very likely that Kim would be wary about making big concrete commitments, at least initially, and want to win economic and political concessions from Trump before any reduction in nuclear capabilities, let alone committing to "full denuclearization." With the two sides not having met at senior levels for some time, Mike Pompeo said Sunday that this process will resume again as soon as this month.
Yet another potential win for Trump comes with China where several months ago he appeared on the verge of a breakthrough trade deal. Yet, despite the fact that the mood music and expectations were so high, agreement remains elusive.
With high-level negotiations expected to resume next month, after several weeks of an impasse, there remains a significant possibility of a breakthrough to avert a potential trade war.
Trump for his part still asserts a "very big deal" is on the horizon, and the possibility cannot be excluded that he and President Xi Jinping both ultimately conclude it is in their personal political interests to take this issue off the table in the context of a slowing global economy.
Yet, if the trade talks do break down again in the coming weeks, it may be harder to reach a deal in 2020 with the extra political pressures of a U.S. election year. Ultimately, as Trump moves into campaign mode, he needs to show his U.S. political base as wide a range of concessions from China to seek to fulfil his "America first" agenda.
Taken together, this underlines why this autumn will be such a big few months for Trump. He could yet enter election year with a foreign policy wind behind his campaign sails, or continue to be flummoxed by policy challenges that have long bedeviled him.
Andrew Hammond (andrewkorea@outlook.com) is an associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics.
