The Mar-a-Lago Doctrine

By Todd Davis

Editor’s note: The opinions expressed here are those of the authors. View more opinion on ScoonTV

President Donald J. Trump has taken the country, and the world, by storm with a relentless series of decrees, executive orders, tariffs, and geopolitical shifts leaving observers and political pundits staggering around in a drunken state of confusion and panic. Many traditionalists, defenders of the bulwark system of globalization that has buttressed American ideology since the World Wars, lament the chaos these seemingly random policy changes are wreaking on the carefully cultivated Davos Club. What we are seeing is not chaos. Instead, we are witnessing a seismic shift in US doctrine, the advent of a new era, the Mar-a-Lago Doctrine.  

The emerging Mar-a-Lago Doctrine has six core elements that differentiate it from prior modern US policy; tariffs as economic leverage, isolationism with strategic engagement, a transactional foreign policy, nationalism over globalization, media and spectacle as power, and the post-modern Royal Court model of government. Tying all these elements together is the belief that America is a vastly powerful nation that has allowed its resources and might to be voluntarily capped or tempered by less powerful nations who have been leeching off America for their benefit to the detriment of Americans. Through misguided policies, the United States has voluntarily restrained its strength and subsidized other countries at the expense of its citizens. This perspective underpins all six tenets of the Mar-a-Lago Doctrine. 

Tariffs as Economic Leverage

America’s industrial base was weakened not by competition but by unfair trade deals, which prioritized globalization over American workers. Free trade agreements like NAFTA decimated the American Middle Class, sending millions of good-paying manufacturing jobs out of the country hollowing out cities turning prosperous downtowns into dystopian crime-ridden drug zones. The doctrine seeks to reverse this imbalance through tariffs and bilateral deals.

President Trump is using aggressive tariff policies as a primary tool of economic and diplomatic strategy. Rather than traditional free trade agreements, the emphasis is on unilateral or bilateral trade deals where tariffs are used to pressure other nations into more favorable terms for Americans. Presidential administration after administration, both Democrat and Republican, has accepted crippling tariffs from other countries on American goods that effectively close us out of the global market in those sectors.

The neoliberal belief in free trade has been for the US to trade at a loss with foreign countries in the hope that this will build up those nations creating a democratic base that indirectly benefits America through political cooperation and assistance. Countries vanquished in World War 2, Germany and Japan, were rebuilt into economic powerhouses. And while it could be argued this helped lead to American prosperity in the 1980s and a victory in the Cold War, trade deals with nations that had an abundance of cheap labor began to take an increasing toll on the American economy from the 1990s onward.

Jobs in manufacturing went from Memphis to Mexico, to China, to Vietnam, to Indonesia. Always migrating to the cheapest labor pool. Americans were called lazy because they couldn’t make a shirt for $2. Products from these countries flooded into the American market destroying homeland industries like textiles or hardware creating corporate monopolies such as Walmart that took advantage of these cheap goods selling them to increasingly impoverished Americans. Sure, we could buy a $8 shirt at Walmart, but we’d be able to afford to spend $16 on that same shirt if we had homeland industries paying people livable wages in America. 

Isolationism With Strategic Engagement

While not fully disengaged from world affairs, the approach leans toward reducing U.S. commitments to multinational organizations such as NATO, the UN, and WTO and focusing on direct, transactional relationships with other countries. Military engagements are avoided unless they serve a clear economic or strategic national interest. 

President Trump was a vocal critic of NATO during his first term and seems downright hostile to the organization in his second. He has aggressively criticized former President Biden and NATO for starting a proxy war with Russia over Ukraine. He’s taken a lean Russia approach to ending the war, even if it means making peace without input from major NATO countries like Britain and France. Ukraine has been increasingly isolated from discussions because it can’t offer America much and it seems obsessed with continuing the war until the last Ukrainian; something that doesn’t benefit America. 

An honest discussion with President Trump would likely reveal that he’d rather be allied with Russia over many NATO members. He respects and genuinely likes President Putin, the same can’t be said for Keir Starmer, Justin Trudeau, or Emmanuel Macron who exhibit all the effeminate neoliberal tendencies in politicians that Trump’s MAGA base has resoundingly rejected. Trump campaigned on ending forever wars. If the NATO establishment has only led to decades of war for Americans, what has it prevented? More war?

America has carried the financial and military burden for allies who do not reciprocate. This leads to skepticism toward NATO, the UN, and foreign aid unless direct U.S. benefits are clear. Gutting USAID was the first move toward destabilizing the former world order where money from US tax dollars was spent to prop up governments and institutions that were not benefiting the Americans paying for them. A withdrawal from NATO, especially if the Ukraine war goes south or the former US allies will not cooperate with Trump’s deal, is not out of the question. 

Transactional Foreign Policy

For a long time, America has conducted foreign policy under the auspices of protecting and nurturing noble, ephemeral concepts like “democracy” or “freedom”. However, it turns out that being the champion of the free world doesn’t pay the bills. In fact, it costs money. A lot of money. Protecting democracy from the authoritarian boogeyman also leads to war. Forever war.  

America tried to defend democracy in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Ukraine leading to major wars that all ended in either outright military defeat or led to America taking its ball and going home. Beyond the human life these endeavors cost, the financial toll has been astronomical. 

The Mar-a-Lago doctrine redefines American strategic partnerships. President Trump believes that foreign policy should be based on what each country gives back to America, rather than abstract ideals of diplomacy. Alliances should be conditional on economic and security contributions.

Instead of long-term alliances based on shared values, international relationships are treated as business deals, where loyalty is secondary to immediate benefits. This has been evident in Trump’s approach to U.S. allies, often demanding financial contributions in exchange for continued military and diplomatic support.

Trump’s recent diplomatic overtures make more sense when viewed in this light. Russia, a country with vast resources and a stable government, offers far more transactionally to the United States than Ukraine. Canada and Mexico have long benefited from unbalanced trade relationships with America while benefiting from the afterglow of the Monroe Doctrine. As president, Trump has determined that both of America’s border nations need to pay more for this privileged status. 

Nationalism over Globalization

If the defining ideological battle of the 20th century was capitalism versus communism, then the primary conflict of the 21st century is nationalism versus globalism. Nothing has done more to decrease the standard of living in Western nations than globalization. Immigration, outsourcing of jobs, and mass competition with serf labor from undeveloped nations have devastated the homeland. Corporations have reaped record profits while the standard of living among Americans has plummeted as more and more have fallen through the Middle-Class safety net.

The America First idea prioritizes domestic industry, manufacturing, and workers over multinational trade and international climate agreements. Organizations like the WTO and EU attempt to erase national identity in favor of a globalist group controlled by the extremely wealthy. The value and benefits of citizenship are being erased. 

President Trump is seeking prioritization of American sovereignty, industry, and culture over global institutions, trade networks, and multinational agreements. The Mar-a-Lago doctrine rejects the idea of global interdependence in favor of economic and political self-sufficiency.

Globalization weakened America by offshoring jobs, eroding sovereignty, and prioritizing multinational corporations over national industries. Trump seeks to reassert U.S. dominance by putting American economic and political interests first. Implementation of this means withdrawing or marginalizing organizations whose loyalty is not to Americans but to multinational entities concerned with amassing capital and resources on a global scale. 

The Post-Modern Royal Court

Versailles became the nexus of power within France during the reign of Louis XIV. By centralizing power at Versailles, Louis was able to control the French nobles through personal influence and direct favor. 

Mar-a-Lago serves as the symbolic and functional power center, akin to Louis XIV’s Versailles. Trump’s political circle operates as a court-like environment where loyalty, personal access, and social proximity to the leader matter more than bureaucratic structures or traditional governance. This court-style governance fosters an atmosphere where informal influence; through personal relationships, media positioning, and patronage, shapes policy.

A rudimentary version of this power structure existed during Trump’s first term when figures like Rudy Giuliani, Jared Kushner, and Ivanka Trump wielded influence not through official roles but through direct access to Trump. As the second Trump administration begins these figures exist but have been given specific positions, domains, or fiefdoms if we are to retain the Versailles analogy. Tom Holmon, Pete Hegseth, Stephen Miller, Pam Bondi, Robert Kennedy Jr, and Kash Patel were handpicked by the president to specifically carry out or enforce tenants of the Mar-a-Lago doctrine. 

Elon Musk, the richest and most high-profile of Trump’s inner circle and head of DOGE has begun an assault on government waste and excess. He’s also destroying the foundations of government bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is a key impediment to the power of a royal court. 

Trump’s royal court approach believes that bureaucracies and traditional institutions are outdated or self-serving, and that power should be centralized around a decisive leader who can cut through red tape and act in the nation’s interest without interference.

Media and Spectacle as Power

Further establishing a royal court aura and grandeur, Trump has made new additions to the Oval Office embellishing the room with more gold. Spectacle and pomp as means to convey the power of the office and America are driving forces behind the Mar-a-Lago doctrine. 

The 47th presidency could be described as the first modern administration in the way it harnesses and communicates through social media. Unlike traditional administrations that focus on institutional continuity, the Mar-a-Lago Doctrine embraces media dominance, direct engagement through social platforms, and the cultivation of a personalist leadership style that keeps Trump at the center of attention.

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump reached low-intensity voters by running ads on TikTok and going on numerous podcasts, a medium that is increasingly serving as a primary news source for young Americans. As a result, Trump won young men and blew up the narrative that the Democratic Party held the Zoomers in a vice grip. 

The nontraditional approach extends through all aspects of communication with the White House. Media outlets that would have no chance of getting into a White House press briefing under Joe Biden now get to ask questions from Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s press secretary. Meanwhile, traditional media institutions like the Associated Press are banned after not accepting the newly renamed Gulf of America. 

Trump’s war with the media began in his first term. Continued gaslighting by the mainstream media, pushing the partisan January 6th “insurrection”, the lies during COVID and on the Ukraine war have been self-made error after error. Americans no longer have any trust in traditional media. And for good reason. The president believes that America’s decline has been fueled by a hostile press and establishment forces. Controlling the narrative is as important as the policy itself. Therefore he embraces direct communication with the people to bypass traditional media gatekeepers. 

The Road Ahead 

The Mar-a-Lago Doctrine frames post-World War II American leadership as a long period of voluntary weakness, where international commitments, multinational agreements, and the erosion of national industry diluted U.S. strength. The doctrine presents itself as a corrective force, aimed at reasserting America’s rightful place as a dominant power by ending self-imposed restraints and demanding reciprocal treatment from allies and rivals alike.

This represents a fundamental shift in how America engages with the world; rejecting multilateral entanglements in favor of bilateral, transactional relationships, prioritizing national strength over global cooperation, and leveraging economic tools like tariffs to force better terms for American industry. It is a doctrine born from the belief that the United States has been systematically underutilizing its economic and military power by accommodating allies and adversaries who have contributed little in return. By focusing on self-reliance, economic nationalism, and media-driven leadership, this philosophy challenges the long-held assumptions of post-World War II American strategy.

Over the next four years as President Trump establishes this doctrine, key questions will be answered: can a tariff-driven economy sustain long-term growth, or will global supply chains resist America’s demands? Will a withdrawal from international agreements lead to increased leverage? Will America expand and add territory? And as traditional diplomatic norms erode, will America’s dominance be reasserted or further challenged? 

President Trump wants to establish American power that will last beyond his four years in office. He wants to chart a new course of domestic and foreign policy that will last for generations, enduring long beyond the current administration. The next four years will determine whether or not the Mar-a-Lago Doctrine was an unsuitable experiment for American democracy or the nation’s future as it transformed from a Republic into a true Empire.