“AMERICA FIRST”: IDEOLOGICAL ROOTS AND CONTEMPORARY CONTENT
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17072/2218-1067-2026-1-94-103Keywords:
“America First”, “Make America Great Again”, Donald Trump, USA, unilateralism, protectionism, nationalism, populism, nativismAbstract
Upon his return to the White House in 2025, D. Trump has actively employed the "America First" slogan to conceptually justify domestic and foreign policy decisions from the standpoint of protecting U.S. national interests. However, neither the Trump administration nor experts have reached a consensus on the key components of the "America First" policy. This article aims to clarify its current ideological content, considering its history. The hypothesis is put forward that "America First" constitutes a conceptual construct designed to meet the demands of the current political situation. To test this hypothesis, retrospective and historical-genetic methods are used. The first section of the article identifies the ideological origins of this construct within American political thought and traces its semantic evolution. The second section reconstructs the conceptual content of "America First" under D. Trump’s first administration and at the beginning of his second presidential term through an analysis of official sources, with a focus on persistent narratives evident in earlier iterations of the concept. In conclusion, the author argues that it is untenable to equate the "America First" construct developed by D. Trump with its earlier embodiments, aligning merely in their functionality, with their interpretation depending on the specific historical context.References
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