{"id":209840,"date":"2016-04-27T18:50:22","date_gmt":"2016-04-27T18:50:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=209840"},"modified":"2016-04-27T18:50:22","modified_gmt":"2016-04-27T18:50:22","slug":"us-election-2016-trump-details-america-first-foreign-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=209840","title":{"rendered":"US election 2016: Trump details &#8216;America First&#8217; foreign plan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Donald Trump has detailed his foreign policy in a speech, a day after sweeping to a win in five US primaries.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican candidacy in the 2016 presidential race, said he would pursue an &#8220;America First&#8221; policy.<\/p>\n<p>He called the foreign policy of President Barack Obama&#8217;s administration &#8220;a complete and total disaster&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>On Tuesday, Mr Trump called himself the Republican &#8220;presumptive nominee&#8221; after his primary wins.<\/p>\n<p>He claimed victories in Connecticut, Delaware, Rhode Island, Maryland and Pennsylvania.<br \/>\nWhat did Trump say?<\/p>\n<p>Before the speech, he promised it would not be a &#8220;Trump doctrine&#8221;, and that he would retain some flexibility to make changes if elected.<\/p>\n<p>Much of his speech focused on what he called the &#8220;weakness, confusion and disarray&#8221; of the Obama administration, and his hope of reversing it.<\/p>\n<p>Before the audience in Washington, he vowed to &#8220;shake the rust off America&#8217;s foreign policy&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p><strong>On Islamic State<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Mr Trump said that, under his administration &#8220;their days are numbered &#8211; I won&#8217;t tell them when, and I won&#8217;t tell them how&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>He had previously said he would weaken so-called Islamic State (IS) by cutting off their access to oil, and supported waterboarding and other strong interrogation methods against them. He did not return to these proposals on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Containing the spread of radical Islam must be a major foreign policy goal of the United States and indeed, the world,&#8221; he said on Wednesday, adding that he would work closely with US allies in the Middle East to combat extremism.<\/p>\n<p><strong>On Nato and other powers<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>New talks would be sought with the United States&#8217; allies in Nato, Mr Trump said, to try and reshape the organisation&#8217;s structure and discuss a &#8220;rebalancing&#8221; of US financing towards it.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Trump said he would also aim to hold talks with Russia to try and establish common ground, possibly over Islamic extremism.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Some say the Russians can&#8217;t be reasonable,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I intend to find out.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>China, he said, &#8220;respects strength, and by letting them take advantage of us economically like they are doing, we are losing all their respect&#8221;. He said he would seek to &#8220;fix our relations with China&#8221; but did not suggest how.<\/p>\n<p><strong>On US allies<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The countries we defend must pay for the cost of this defence,&#8221; he said. &#8220;If not, the US must be prepared to let these countries defend themselves. We have no choice.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Speaking to the New York Times last month about the US-Japan relationship, he said: &#8220;If we&#8217;re attacked, they do not have to come to our defence, if they&#8217;re attacked, we have to come totally to their defence. And that is a, that&#8217;s a real problem.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Who are his advisers?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Mr Trump once said he was his own best foreign policy adviser, but, in recent months, has expanded his backroom team. Some of his appointments have proved controversial.<\/p>\n<p>The team is led by Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama who has helped shape Mr Trump&#8217;s policies.<\/p>\n<p>Another member, retired Gen Joseph Schmitz, resigned from the military in 2005 amid<br \/>\naccusations of misconduct. However, Mr Schmitz was never charged with wrongdoing.<\/p>\n<p>Another adviser, Walid Phares, was criticised when he was named as part of Mitt Romney&#8217;s foreign policy team in 2011.<\/p>\n<p>Muslim advocacy groups took issue with Mr Phares&#8217;s close ties to right-wing Christian militia groups during the Lebanese civil war.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What do others think of Trump&#8217;s ideas?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Before the speech on Wednesday, Aaron David Miller, former adviser to Republican and Democratic administrations, said Mr Trump&#8217;s proposals were &#8220;a perfect storm of isolationism, muscular nationalism, with a dash of pragmatism and realism&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Steve Schmidt, the former campaign manager to 2008 Republican candidate John McCain, told Reuters that Mr Trump was under pressure &#8220;to show that he has the substance, the depth of knowledge and the vision to be the American commander-in-chief&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What happened on Tuesday?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>After his sweep of the five mid-Atlantic states, Mr Trump said of the battle for the Republican nomination: &#8220;It&#8217;s over. As far as I&#8217;m concerned, it&#8217;s over.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He told supporters in New York he would not moderate his policies if elected president.\u00a0For the Democrats, Hillary Clinton was denied a clean sweep by Bernie Sanders, after he won in Rhode Island.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Trump said his Democratic rival&#8217;s only advantage in the presidential race was being a woman.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Frankly, if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don&#8217;t think she&#8217;d get 5% of the vote,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Mrs Clinton hit back at his accusation that she was playing the &#8220;woman card&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Well, if fighting for women&#8217;s healthcare and paid family leave and equal pay is playing the woman card, then deal me in,&#8221; she told cheering supporters in Philadelphia.<br \/>\n&#8211;<br \/>\nBy: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Donald Trump has detailed his foreign policy in a speech, a day after sweeping to a win in five US primaries. Mr Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican candidacy in the 2016 presidential race, said he would pursue an &#8220;America First&#8221; policy. He called the foreign policy of President Barack Obama&#8217;s administration &#8220;a complete and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":209841,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=209840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/209841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=209840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=209840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=209840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}