With the world riveted by the US presidential election, the debate pivoted on the world. On Tuesday evening, former President Donald Trump and current Vice President Kamala Harris faced off in Philadelphia ahead of the November 5 vote. From tariffs to energy and immigration, and from China to the Middle East, the two candidates often presented sharply contrasting visions on a range of foreign policy issues—including consequential questions about the stakes for the United States in averting a Russian triumph in Ukraine and assuring a Ukrainian victory. Below, Atlantic Council experts offer insight on what we learned from the debate about each candidate’s globe-spanning intentions.
Click to jump to an expert analysis:
John E. Herbst: On Ukraine, the debate underscored an unfortunate synergy between the two sides
Josh Lipsky: Too little attention on China, too much attention on tariffs
Kimberly Donovan: Setting the record straight on US sanctions on Iran and its proxies
Philippe Dickinson: An answer on how to ‘Trump-proof’ NATO
Landon Derentz: Trump and Harris both highlighted the direct link between jobs and energy
Jӧrn Fleck: Trump gives European leaders (except for Hungary’s) cause for concern
On Ukraine, the debate underscored an unfortunate synergy between the two sides
The presidential candidates largely covered old ground in discussing Moscow’s war on Ukraine. Trump reiterated that he would end the war as president-elect because he knows Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin well and both respect him. He also repeated his claim that Putin never would have launched the full-scale invasion if he, Trump, were in office; Putin attacked, according to Trump, because the Biden administration was weak, as evidenced in its disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. Trump also echoed the inaccurate theme often heard on the populist right that the United States has provided significantly more aid to Ukraine than its European allies have.
Perhaps the most interesting moment on Russia and Ukraine came when the moderators asked if Trump thought a Ukrainian victory was in US interests—twice. Trump’s response was that an end to this bloody conflict, which has cost “millions of lives,” was in the US interest.
Unfortunately, the moderators did not ask Harris the same question. The Biden administration has famously (or infamously) avoided saying that its goal is a Ukrainian victory or a Kremlin defeat—until this month. Harris was merely asked what her take was on the war. She used the occasion to define the danger of Moscow’s aggression in much the same terms as US President Joe Biden has. The aggression against Ukraine was a blow to the rules-based international order, and a Kremlin victory there could lead to Russian aggression against the United States’ NATO allies. She proudly defended the administration’s role in rallying the international community to support Ukraine and prevent a Russian win.
It is also too bad that Harris was not asked if she would pursue a bolder policy than the administration’s slow rolling of more advanced weapons to Ukraine and its reluctance to remove the restrictions on the use of all US weapons against military targets in Russia. This enabled her to appear tougher than Trump without touching on the vulnerability in the administration’s handling of the war. The moderators could have done better.
The debate was a reminder of an unfortunate synergy between the approaches of Trump and Biden, and maybe Biden and Harris, on Moscow’s war against Ukraine. Trump on several occasions raised the specter of nuclear war in criticizing Biden’s weakness as bringing us closer to Armageddon. Trump apparently thought that a telling blow; but his argument ignores the growing realization that the Biden team has been intimidated by Putin’s nuclear bluster from taking stronger steps to advance US interests by hastening Russia’s defeat. And the thing is, Trump was demonstrating the same fear as the Biden team has.
The debate also featured some political theater (of the absurd) on the Russian war. When Harris was praising the administration’s handling of the war, she mentioned that she met with Zelenskyy shortly before the big invasion. Sensing an opening, Trump pounced, stating that her “mediation” failed to prevent war. Of course, Harris was overstating her role, and Trump was punching at a phantom.
—John E. Herbst is the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and a former US ambassador to Ukraine.
Too little attention on China, too much attention on tariffs
If you made a word cloud for the debate last night, the term “tariff” would loom large. The candidates started with tariffs—and a back and forth on the likelihood that new tariffs would cause inflation—and came back to tariffs at the end. This debate wasn’t happening in 1930, the year that the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was passed; it was happening in 2024.
It tells you something about how far international economic policymaking has come over the past two administrations that the candidates both agree that tariffs were useful and instead disagreed on which sectors should be punished—and which countries should be targeted. It’s not about if; it’s about how high. The economics of tariffs are clear: They are usually inflationary. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a use case for them, either to protect critical sectors or to try to spur domestic manufacturing. But it does mean that if you want to introduce massive new tariffs, then it’s incumbent to explain the rationale for them. That didn’t happen last night. The last trade war showed us that China did not pay for the tariffs. Instead, companies who pay the import costs pass on those price hikes to consumers. The results are very likely to be the same in a new trade war.
Countries around the world will hear the discussion between Trump and Harris and understand that this is a new era in the United States—one in which both parties are rethinking the balance between national security and economics.
The reason that the balance is being recalibrated is, in large part, due to China. That’s why it was striking that there was so little direct debate about China on Tuesday night. The world’s second-largest economy, the country that presents the greatest political and economic challenge to the United States, the country that the State Department called out on the day of the debate for providing essentially unlimited support to Russia was more of an afterthought than a centerpiece. From artificial intelligence to chips, China was invoked, but largely in passing. But the next president will be grappling with China each and every day of their administration. We could have used a bigger presence in the word cloud for China, and perhaps a smaller one for tariffs.
—Josh Lipsky is the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center and a former adviser to the International Monetary Fund.
Setting the record straight on US sanctions on Iran and its proxies
When asked how he would negotiate with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas over the ongoing Gaza conflict, Trump stated that the Biden administration “took off all the sanctions” that Trump had placed on Iran, further saying that “Iran was broke under Donald Trump” and “had no money for Hamas or Hezbollah.” This is not accurate.
Following the United States’ 2018 departure from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Trump administration reinstated the sanctions on Iran that had been lifted as part of the nuclear deal and implemented a “maximum economic pressure” campaign targeting the Iranian regime and its partners and proxies in the region. Despite these crippling sanctions, Iran moved forward with its ambitions to develop weapons-grade enriched uranium, and it continued to provide hundreds of millions of dollars to support like-minded terrorist groups, while arming them with military know-how, equipment, and missiles that they would go on to use against Israel.
The sanctions levied against Iran during the Trump administration remain in place today. The Biden administration has not lifted or taken off any sanctions on Iran and, as has been previously noted in Atlantic Council research, the United States maintains more than 1,600 sanctions targeting the Iranian regime and Iran’s partners and proxies, including Hamas and Hezbollah. Further, just this week, the US Treasury sanctioned more Iran-based individuals and entities that are facilitating Iran’s military support and delivery of weapons to Russia.
In retrospect, more could have been done by both the United States and Israel to enforce sanctions and restrict Hamas’s ability to raise funds, evade sanctions, and launder money leading up to the October 7, 2023, attacks. However, it is incorrect to say that sanctions targeting Iran, Hamas, or other Iranian partners and proxies were taken down at any point during the Biden administration, and it is misleading to say that Iran was broke under Trump.
If Harris and Trump debate again, I would be interested to hear their positions on how economic power is leveraged to advance US foreign policy objectives and protect national security interests. Specifically, it would be good to hear how they would weigh the costs, benefits, and risks of relying so heavily on tools such as sanctions and what that means for things like the price of gas for American consumers.
—Kimberly Donovan is the director of the Economic Statecraft Initiative within the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center and a former senior official with the US Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.
An answer on how to ‘Trump-proof’ NATO
A recurring question that animated conversation in the halls of this summer’s NATO Summit in Washington was how to “Trump-proof” the Alliance. To the extent that the question needed a direct answer, Trump himself provided it on the debate stage in Philadelphia: Spend swiftly and substantially on defense, and give Trump the credit. The former president recounted a conversation he had with the outgoing NATO secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, in which he claims Stoltenberg credited Trump’s brinkmanship with forcing the hands of otherwise reluctant Europeans to spend more on their defense budgets. “He said it was one of the most incredible jobs that he’s ever seen done,” Trump noted.
On the surface, this is a simple enough formula. But it invites follow-up questions that will be harder to answer. How much will be enough, particularly if Trump believes continually elevating demands on desperate Europeans will keep the euros flowing? And what of his proposed deal with Russia to end the war? Trump pointedly did not say that Ukraine winning was in the United States’ interest, and he said that an early peace deal would be preferable. NATO allies on the eastern flank have witnessed Putin’s aggressive, coercive tactics dating back to at least 2008, and they know that his appetite grows with the eating. How would NATO unity be sustained if asked to stomach a deal with Moscow?
No doubt the incoming NATO secretary general, former Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, watched and wondered less about how to “Trump-proof” the Alliance than the consequences of doing so.
—Philippe Dickinson is a deputy director with the Atlantic Council’s Transatlantic Security Initiative, within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. He previously served on the political team at the British Embassy in Washington, DC.
Voters looking for reassurance in a world of growing disorder were likely disappointed
Foreign policy does not usually swing a large number of voters in elections, but with major wars in Europe and the Middle East, undecided voters in swing states may have been looking for reassurance in a world of growing global disorder. No news on foreign policy was made in last night’s debate as both candidates repeated their prior positions.
Harris said that she would support Ukraine and work toward a ceasefire in the Middle East. Trump repeated his claim that the conflicts would have never started if he were president, contrasting the current conflagrations with the relative stability that prevailed during his first term. When asked whether he wanted Ukraine to win, Trump repeated his long-standing position that his goal is to end the war, pledging that he could solve the conflict as soon as he is elected and before he enters the Oval Office.
On the global economy, Harris criticized Trump’s promised tariffs, and Trump retorted that the Biden-Harris administration left the tariffs from his first term in place. They debated responsibility for the United States’ humiliating retreat in Afghanistan, with Trump blaming Biden and Harris, while Harris accused Trump of negotiating the agreement to withdraw US forces in the first place.
Voters tuning in in search of new or detailed foreign policy plans to help make their decisions were likely disappointed.
—Matthew Kroenig is the vice president and senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.
Trump and Harris both highlighted the direct link between jobs and energy
Dulled by the steadfastness of US energy markets, attack lines on energy failed to resonate in last night’s debate. With US oil and gas production at all-time highs and the price of gasoline hovering just over a manageable three dollars a gallon, Trump was forced to shift the overall narrative past the typical focus on consumer price sensitivity in favor of a broad juxtaposition between Republican and Democratic visions for the future of the US energy system.
For Trump, that means an emphasis on an abundance of US oil and gas. Harris, however, was prepared for this discussion, touting the Biden administration’s extensive investment in fostering a clean energy economy and highlighting her determination to wield US energy policy as a tool for addressing climate change. And though the presidential hopefuls lacked congruence on the US energy mix, the genesis of each candidate’s energy platform seems to emanate from a shared appreciation of the energy sector’s potential to catalyze more American jobs.
Debate clashes over energy policy quickly veered toward manufacturing and trade policy, including tariffs. While Trump and Harris may quibble over which party is responsible for stimulating more economic opportunity for the electorate, their shared focus on the American worker is a signal to be bullish on the sector regardless of who wins on Election Day. Energy, after all, is a backbone of US competitiveness.
—Landon Derentz is senior director and Morningstar chair for global energy security at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center.
Trump gives European leaders (except for Hungary’s) cause for concern
Last night’s debate provided another reminder for Europeans about what’s at stake in the US elections and that they cannot avoid US politics. Policymakers across the Old Continent were provided a clear picture of the two competing visions for the United States’ role in the world. Save one probably giddy Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, European leaders largely seem to prefer one vision over the other.
The night started with a reminder that Europe (and others around the globe) could potentially face the imposition of costly tariffs starting between 10 percent and 20 percent. This would upend the $1.3 trillion in transatlantic trade with the European Union (EU) and certainly invite a trade war, harming both the US and EU economies.
Trump refused to say that Ukraine should win its war against Russia. He instead opted for his mealy-mouthed pledge to end the war on day one—or even before—without articulating a plan to do so. Harris meanwhile gave a full-throated defense of US support to Ukraine and perhaps the most explicit case she’s made to the American people about why Ukraine matters to the transatlantic alliance.
Trump also recited faulty figures about Europe’s support to Ukraine, claiming the continent gives billions less than the United States. In reality, Europe has committed more to Ukraine than the United States has. European countries are spending more on defense and working on new ways to boost the continent’s defense industry. There’s no denying that the United States is the single largest country supporting Ukraine, and Europe should be doing more for Ukraine’s sake and its own. But the reality of Europe’s support to Ukraine flies in the face of ingrained political rhetoric that has been a stubbornly persistent—and persistently wrong—critique on this side of the Atlantic.
—Jӧrn Fleck is the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center.
Further reading
Wed, Jul 24, 2024
What Kamala Harris’s record in Central America and the Caribbean reveals about her foreign policy approach
New Atlanticist By Jason Marczak
There are ample clues to what US foreign policy would look like with Harris as president in her work in the Americas over the past three-and-a-half years.
Thu, Sep 5, 2024
Biden blocking Nippon Steel’s purchase of US Steel puts ‘friendshoring’ and more at risk
New Atlanticist By Sarah Bauerle Danzman
If the US president does use authorities provided through the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to quash the deal, then there could be far-reaching consequences.
Fri, Aug 30, 2024
Dispatch from Kyiv: How Ukraine’s incursion into Russia has changed the war
New Atlanticist By John E. Herbst
On an Atlantic Council trip to Kyiv, Ambassador John E. Herbst takes stock of how Ukrainians view the war now that their forces have seized more than 460 square miles of Russian territory.
Image: Republican presidential nominee, former US President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee, US Vice President Kamala Harris take part in a presidential debate hosted by ABC in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S., September 10, 2024 in a combination of file photographs. REUTERS/Brian Snyder