Mr. Trump, both in his first term and now during the first eleven months of his second, has made clear that the bipartisan post-Cold War consensus — by which the United States oversaw an economically integrated world order governed by common laws regulating property relations, trade and conflict — has outlived its usefulness. In its place the White House offers a vision of the world carved up into garrisoned spheres of competing influence.

This month, the White House issued its National Security Strategy report, which sought to codify this transition. The report hits all the notes associated with aggrieved America First nationalism: It denounces globalism, free trade and foreign aid, rejects nation-building, and calls on NATO members to spend a greater portion of their G.D.P. on defense spending. The United States, the report warns, will no longer “shoulder forever global burdens” that have no direct connection to its “national interest.”

The heart of the report is a pledge to “reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American pre-eminence.” In the past, militarists invoked the Monroe Doctrine largely out of habit, a recitation of a well-worn catchphrase. Here, though, it plays a more substantive role in defining what an America First future world order might look like.

For the uninitiated, the Monroe Doctrine is neither treaty nor law. It began life as a simple statement, issued by President James Monroe in 1823 recognizing the independence of Spanish American republics and warning Europe that the Western Hemisphere was off-limits for “future colonization.”

President James K. Polk, in 1845, was among the first to elevate the statement into writ, invoking “Mr. Monroe’s doctrine” in his push to take California from Mexico before the British. Polk would again cite Monroe when he annexed Texas. Subsequent presidents used the doctrine as an open police warrant, authorizing serial military occupations and U.S.-backed coups. By the late 19th century, Latin Americans had a new word to describe U.S. interventionism: Monroísmo.

That the Trump administration would turn to this old diplomatic shibboleth to define its foreign policy philosophy make sense. As the world order breaks into competing spheres of influence, each regional power needs to get its hinterlands under control: Moscow in the former Soviet republics, among other places; Beijing in the South China Sea and beyond.

And the United States in Latin America. “If you’re focused on America and America First, you start with your own hemisphere,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said recently. And the Trump administration has, presiding in the last few months over a frenzy of activity, not just executing speedboat operatives alleged to be drug smugglers but also meddling in the internal politics of Brazil, Argentina and Honduras, issuing scattershot threats against Colombia and Mexico, menacing Cuba and Nicaragua, increasing its influence over the Panama Canal, and seizing an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela. The Pentagon is also carrying out a military buildup in the Caribbean that is all but unprecedented in its scale and concentration of firepower, seemingly aimed at effecting regime change in Venezuela.

America First nationalists have long been the staunchest defenders of the Monroe Doctrine. After World War I, nationalists used it to push back against Woodrow Wilson’s proposed League of Nations. Join the league, Henry Cabot Lodge, the powerful Republican chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, warned, and “the Monroe doctrine disappears,” and with it, national sovereignty. Lodge, who identified as an American Firster, said he refused to swear allegiance to the League’s “mongrel” flag.

Senators put forward a resolution ensuring that nothing in the League’s mandate would prevent the United States from using military force in Latin America and that the Monroe Doctrine would remain “wholly outside the jurisdiction of said League of Nations.”

Bowing to pressure, Wilson tried to neutralize opposition by inserting a clause into the League’s charter reaffirming the “validity” of “the Monroe Doctrine.” For naught. The Senate still voted against joining.

At this point, the United States lost its proprietary claim on the phrase. After Japan’s imperial army invaded Manchuria in 1931, Tokyo declared its own Monroe Doctrine. Britain invoked a “British Monroe Doctrine” to justify the continued existence of its empire. And Adolf Hitler responded to F.D.R.’s demand that he respect the sovereignty of Germany’s neighbors by pointing the U.S. president to his nation’s own Monroe Doctrine: “We Germans hold exactly the same doctrine for Europe, or at least for the region and the interest of the greater German Reich.” As the world marched into a second global war, many of its belligerents did so citing the Monroe Doctrine.

Mr. Trump’s renewal of the Monroe Doctrine comes at a similarly precarious moment in world politics. His national security strategy identifies Latin America not, as Monroe did in his 1823 statement, as part of a common community of New World nations but as a theater of global rivalry, a place to extract resources, secure commodity chains, establish bulwarks of national security, fight the drug war, limit Chinese influence and end migration.

“The United States,” the National Security Strategy report insists, “must be pre-eminent in the Western Hemisphere as a condition of our security and prosperity,” able to act “where and when” we need to secure U.S. interests. Mr. Trump’s “Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine simply means that Latin America is to be locked down, and Latin Americans locked out.

Washington has no intention of withdrawing from its position of global primacy. In place of the now defunct liberal international order, the White House is implicitly globalizing the Monroe Doctrine, claiming for the United States the right to unilaterally respond to perceived threats not just within its hemisphere but anywhere on Earth (China excluded).

That claim is not new — it was the centerpiece of the global war on terror. But to insist on it with no accountability, under no outside jurisdiction, free of multilateral entailments and obligations means that the United States intends to deal with the rest of the world as it deals with Latin America, to seize, sanction and kill with impunity.

In 1919, Ismael Montes, a Bolivian diplomat, lamented the fact that the treaty that formally ended World War I, by validating a bellicose version of the Monroe Doctrine, made future conflict inevitable. “The peace is not yet signed,” Montes said, “and one can already see the seeds of a new war.”

Today, the Trump administration is sowing the same seeds. Its ideal of a world organized around a multifront balance of power — with the United States pushing against China, pushing against Russia, sowing division in Europe, threatening Latin America, with all countries, everywhere, angling for advantage — means there will most likely be more confrontation, more brinkmanship, more war. “We must be prepared,” as NATO’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, recently said, “for the scale of war our parents and great-grandparents endured.”

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Trump’s threat, which he delivered on social media, came after China said it would retaliate against U.S. tariffs announced last week.

“If China does not withdraw its 34% increase above their already long term trading abuses by tomorrow, April 8th, 2025, the United States will impose ADDITIONAL Tariffs on China of 50%, effective April 9th,” he wrote on Truth Social. “Additionally, all talks with China concerning their requested meetings with us will be terminated!

Trump has remained defiant as the stock market continued plunging and fears of a recession grew.

“Be Strong, Courageous, and Patient, and GREATNESS will be the result!” he wrote.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1,200 points as trading began on Monday morning, and the S&P 500 was on track to enter a bear market, which means falling 20% from a recent high. Even some of Trump’s allies are raising alarms about the economic damage, and financial forecasts suggest more pain on the horizon for U.S. businesses, consumers and investors.

The Republican president has insisted his tariffs are necessary to rebalance global trade and rebuild domestic manufacturing. He accused other countries of “taking advantage of the Good OL’ USA!” on international trade and said “our past ‘leaders’ are to blame for allowing this.” He singled out China as “the biggest abuser of them all” and criticized Beijing for increasing its own tariffs in retaliation.

Trump also called on the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates. On Friday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned that the tariffs could increase inflation, and he said “there’s a lot of waiting and seeing going on, including by us,” before any decisions would be made.

Investors expect the U.S. central bank to cut its benchmark interest rates at least four times by the end of this year, according to CME Group’s FedWatch, a sign that concerns about inflation will be eclipsed by fears of layoffs and a shrinking economy.

Trump spent the weekend in Florida, arriving on Thursday night to attend a Saudi-funded tournament at his Miami golf course. He stayed at Mar-a-Lago, his private club in Palm Beach, and golfed at two of his properties nearby.

On Sunday, he posted a video of himself hitting a drive, and he told reporters aboard Air Force One that evening that he won a club championship.

“It’s good to win,” Trump said. “You heard I won, right?”

He also said that he wouldn’t back down from his tariffs despite the turmoil in the global markets.

“Sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something,” Trump said.

Goldman Sachs issued a new forecast saying a recession has become more likely even if Trump backtracks from his tariffs. The financial firm said economic growth would slow dramatically “following a sharp tightening in financial conditions, foreign consumer boycotts, and a continued spike in policy uncertainty that is likely to depress capital spending by more than we had previously assumed.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the European Union would focus on trade with other countries besides the United States, saying there are “vast opportunities” elsewhere.

Trump said he spoke with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba to start trade negotiations. He complained on Truth Social “they have treated the U.S. very poorly on Trade” and “they don’t take our cars, but we take MILLIONS of theirs.”

Ishiba said he told Trump that he’s “strongly concerned” that tariffs would discourage investment from Japan, which has been the world’s biggest investor in the U.S. in the past five years. He described the situation as a “national crisis” and said that his government would negotiate with Washington to urge Trump to reconsider the tariffs.

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro suggested countries would need to do much more than simply lower their own tariff rates to reach deals, saying they would have to make structural changes to their tax and regulatory codes.

“Let’s take Vietnam,” he said on CNBC. “When they come to us and say, ‘We’ll go to zero tariffs,’ that means nothing to us because it’s the non-tariff cheating that matters.”

On Monday, the president is scheduled to welcome the Los Angeles Dodgers to the White House to celebrate their World Series victory. He’s also meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and they’re expected to hold a joint press conference in the afternoon.

Trump has strived for a united front after the chaotic infighting of his first term. However, the economic turbulence has exposed some fractures within his disparate coalition of supporters.

Bill Ackman, a hedge fund manager, lashed out at Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Sunday as “indifferent to the stock market and the economy crashing.” He said Cantor Fitzgerald, the financial firm led by Lutnick before he joined the Trump administration, stood to profit because of bond investments.

On Monday, Ackman apologized for his criticism but reiterated his concerns about Trump’s tariffs.

“I am just frustrated watching what I believe to be a major policy error occur after our country and the president have been making huge economic progress that is now at risk due to the tariffs,” he wrote on X.

Top White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett told Fox News Channel that Ackman should “ease off the rhetoric a little bit.”

He insisted that other countries, not the United States, are “going to bear the brunt of the tariffs.”

Billionaire Elon Musk, a top adviser to Trump on overhauling the federal government, expressed skepticism about tariffs over the weekend. Musk has said that tariffs would drive up costs for Tesla, his electric automaker.

“I hope it is agreed that both Europe and the United States should move ideally in my view to a zero tariff situation, effectively creating a free trade zone between Europe and North America,” Musk said in a video conference with Italian politicians.

He added, “That certainly has been my advice to the president.”

Navarro later told Fox News that Musk “doesn’t understand” the situation.

“He sells cars,” Navarro said. “That’s what he does.” He added that, “He’s simply protecting his own interests as any business person would do.”

Associated Press writer Mari Yamaguchi contributed from Tokyo.

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