The incoming Trump administration’s shifting focus towards Western Hemispheric affairs may come as a relief to those who have been critical of United States foreign policy since the end of World War II. Donald Trump has talked about reducing Chinese influence in the Panama Canal while also seeking to annex Greenland. While some of these proposals may seem outlandish, they’re still a marked improvement to the United States’ universalist approach to foreign policy that previous Presidential administrations have pursued.

The foreign policy consensus of the last 80 years has consisted of ventures aiming to remake the world in America’s image through direct military interventions, coups, the imposition of sanctions, and the use of “color revolutions” against governments that don’t conform with the United States’ foreign policy vision.

Often, these foreign policy actions were pursued well outside of the United States’ traditional sphere of influence in areas spanning the Eurasian landmass. Naturally, after trillions of dollars spent, thousands of American troops perishing on the battlefield in addition to thousands more dealing with the trauma of prolonged warfare, and very little results to show for these military excursions, the American populace grew exhausted with these conflicts.

These military misadventures coupled with racial anxieties generated by mass migration and the administrative state’s anti-white policies led to the election of Donald Trump in 2016 and his re-election in 2024. The American people have become fed up with the liberal internationalist order and are clamoring for a genuinely nationalist alternative.

Instinctively, Trump is making the right noises and directing his attention to the Western Hemisphere—America’s traditional sphere of influence. However, politics is a messy business and some of Trump’s sensible proposals can easily be co-opted and subverted by DC elites. Trump has every reason to put the United States on equal footing with respect to trade. But it’s another thing to promote economic and political unions with countries such as Canada.

Rejecting the Push for a North American Union

Trump has hinted at adding Canada as the 51st state of the Union and even took a jab at the recently departed Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by calling him “governor.” Additionally, Trump clarified he would only use “economic force” to bring Canada and the United States into a union of sorts.

“Canada and the US, that would really be something,” Trump remarked. “You get rid of that artificially drawn line, and you take a look at what that looks like, and it would also be much better for national security.”

What Trump is sketching out here is the eventual establishment of a “North American Union”—a political project where the borders of Canada, Mexico, and the United States would gradually disappear and give way to a supranational political entity on the North American continent. It’s anyone’s guess if Trump is serious about moving forward with regional integration. Nevertheless, sober nationalists would do well to oppose all efforts to create a veritable superstate in the Western Hemisphere.

The late Robert Pastor, a foreign affairs writer and the founding director of the Center for North American Studies at American University, was one of the most vocal proponents of a NAU, or as he euphemistically referred to it as the “North American Community.” Organizations such as the John Birch Society and former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan have warned about the NAU, which they perceived as a plan to erode American sovereignty and reward corporations and unaccountable bureaucracies with immense power. For that reason, JBS and Buchanan were adamant opponents of trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which they perceived as a step toward creating a globalist political structure in the Western Hemisphere.

For his part, Pastor viewed NAFTA as an incremental step towards an NAU. He declared, “NAFTA was merely the first draft of an economic constitution for North America.” Naturally, the nationalist Right has had a skeptical eye towards the political class’s “free trade” ambitions.

One of the ironies of the push for free trade is that NAFTA and its successor in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) were anything but free trade, but rather a form of managed trade. Former JBS CEO Bill Hahn argued that the USMCA would “add even more layers of unaccountable bureaucracy.” The USMCA is a monstrosity of a trade agreement that is over 2,300 pages long. In forging this agreement, elites dangled the carrot of lower tariffs to obfuscate a bureaucratic move towards sovereignty-destroying regional integration.

Traditionally, free trade would be conducted in a simple, bilateral fashion where two countries would hash out some of their trade concerns and ultimately allow for greater flows of goods without heavy-handed government interference once certain trade discrepancies were addressed. However, the managed trade schemes promoted in Washington not only get more government involved in overseeing the trade process, but state policy is also directed toward erecting regulatory bodies to carry out the trade agreement and enforce its labyrinth of provisions.

The name of the game with these trade agreements is creating supranational governing bodies as opposed to simplifying regional trade. A new path must be charted.

A Modest Proposal for Western Hemispheric Governance

In this new nationalist moment, United States policymakers would be wise to resist the temptation of pursuing policies that seek to grow the size of the country both in terms of territory and human population. Many politicians stuck in the old ways of maintaining American primacy on the global stage will want to create a North American version of the European Union to compete with Eurasian powers like China and Russia.

Suffice to say, this endeavor is unnecessary. For one, the United States is secure with its vast nuclear arsenal and two oceanic moats in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. No outside forces will be invading the country anytime soon. Instead, foreign policy decision makers should have the United States go back to its roots and pursue a 21st century Monroe Doctrine, where it makes it clear to the international community that it will not tolerate outside powers setting up hostile client states and military installations within the Western Hemisphere. In return, the United States will not intervene in the affairs of other countries outside of its sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere.

The 21st century Monroe Doctrine will have a more benign hegemonic touch. Under this new framework, the United States would be cooperating with governments like President Nayib Bukele’s in El Salvador and use soft power mechanisms to encourage exchanges with populists groups stateside and across Latin America. These kinds of interactions can foster the dissemination of best practices, institutional knowledge, and tools that will allow for the United States to be more in sync with Latin American governments on issues concerning immigration, transnational crime, and the securing of shipping lanes.

None of this should require direct military interventions, cloak-and-dagger operations, nor color revolutions that destabilize countries. Such programs would be more long-term oriented and developed in a manner that goes beyond presidential administrations. That way, these structures and relationships remain firm and multi-generational in nature, free of partisan bickering.

As for trade, bilateralism is key. There’s no need to create trade agreements thousands of pages long with multiple countries. A country-by-country approach is preferable, as the United States determines which countries practice trade in an ethical manner that also advances national interests, while tariffing or even closing itself off to countries with labor standards and trade practices that are inimical to US interests.

Even in the 21st century, the nation-state model is still worth fighting for. It would behoove the ruling class of tomorrow to not fall for the siren song of the warmed-over globalist project of the NAU. It is these kinds of political structures that will threaten the outposts of Western civilization that were forged on the North American continent by European pioneers.

These unique spaces of European civilization should be preserved and fought for; not transformed into a Frankensteinian monster of globalist proportions.