Can the USA Regain It's Credibility

America’s credibility problem didn’t begin with one president and it won’t be solved by electing another. Allies and competitors alike watched the whiplash of the last decade ... withdrawals from agreements, tariffs on friends, rhetorical swings on alliances ... and drew a sober conclusion: U.S. policy is now subject to abrupt reversals with each electoral cycle. Even if Washington resumed every “pre-2016” habit tomorrow, the world would price in the risk that it could all be undone in four years. That trust discount will shape geopolitics ... and our prosperity ... for a long time.

What does a credibility deficit look like in practice? It’s not dramatic walkouts. It’s a thousand quiet hedges. Allies duplicate supply chains rather than rely on ours. Intelligence sharing gets a little thinner. Trade partners design standards without waiting for U.S. input. Emerging economies borrow from other lenders who show up reliably, even if the terms are worse. Companies demand higher risk premiums to invest under U.S.-centric rules that could change with a pen stroke. In security terms, jittery partners buy their own insurance ... long-range missiles, uranium enrichment, defense industrial bases ... because they’re no longer sure our umbrella opens in the rain.

This is bigger than personality politics. From Paris to the Iran deal, from the WTO to Open Skies, the deeper signal was that American commitments have become executive, reversible, and partisan. Meanwhile, a bipartisan turn toward industrial policy and protection ... some of it justified ... has convinced many that U.S. reliability is conditional: we will follow rules when convenient and invoke “national security” when not. The world can live with a hard-nosed America. It struggles with an unpredictable one.

So how do we recover? Not with speeches, but with scaffolding. Credibility is the product of institutions that survive elections. We need to make our yes mean yes ... and to make it hard, legally and politically, to say no on a whim.

First, legislate durability. Move core foreign commitments from executive agreements into statute or ratified treaties wherever feasible. Congress has already raised the bar for a NATO exit; extend that logic to other pillars: key alliance basing agreements, Paris-aligned climate targets, and major security guarantees. Reform tariff authorities so no president can weaponize trade against allies without congressional approval. Sunset emergency powers that have become permanent fixtures.

Second, fix our fiscal and procedural chaos. Nothing rattles allies ... and delights adversaries ... like debt-ceiling brinkmanship and shutdown theater. A country that toys with default cannot credibly preach stability. Enact automatic stabilizers for government funding and eliminate the debt ceiling as a recurring hostage.

Third, rebuild multilateral muscle. Help restore a functioning WTO dispute system and recommit to rules we helped write; if the rules are outdated, lead the rewrite with real bargaining, not carve-outs for ourselves. Reenter serious, binding economic cooperation in the Indo-Pacific and the Americas ... whether a modernized CPTPP or a new framework with enforceable labor, climate, and digital standards. Allies don’t expect free trade utopianism; they do expect predictability.

Fourth, calibrate our economic statecraft. Sanctions and export controls work best when they are targeted, transparent, and multilateral. Overuse erodes the dollar’s centrality and pushes partners to build workarounds. Publish clearer criteria, narrow the use of secondary sanctions, and align measures through the G7 and EU so they look like law, not leverage.

Fifth, invest in the alliance ecosystem beyond leaders. Institutionalize inter-parliamentary and subnational diplomacy ... governors’ climate compacts, city-level standards, congressional exchanges ... so cooperation doesn’t hinge on the White House. Many allies kept the climate flame alive by partnering with U.S. states and cities during federal retrenchment; formalize and fund that redundancy.

Sixth, align values with prioritization and humility. We won’t persuade every partner to share every norm, but we can be consistent about a few: anti-corruption, sovereignty, opposition to mass atrocities. That means occasionally saying no to expedient deals and being transparent when interests override ideals. Hypocrisy is costlier than disagreement.

Seventh, show up with public goods, not just sermons. Climate finance that actually flows, pandemic preparedness that stocks regional hubs, infrastructure that breaks ground ... these make trust tangible. MDB reform, SDR rechanneling, and patient capital for the Global South will earn more reliability points than any communique.

Eighth, make defense commitments boring again. Multi-year aid packages for Ukraine and Taiwan, predictable Indo-Pacific posture, steady FMS timelines, and allied co-production all signal continuity. Extended deterrence isn’t a tweet; it’s on-time deliveries and joint planning.

Finally, repair the plumbing at home. Protect election administration, respect an apolitical civil service, and clarify Department of Justice independence. The world reads our domestic institutions as leading indicators of foreign reliability. If our own rules hold under stress, partners will bet they’ll hold abroad.

Even if we do all this, the trust gap won’t close overnight. Expect a decade-long probation. Europe will deepen defense integration as a hedge. Asian partners will keep balancing between us and China. Standards bodies will be more contested. The dollar will remain dominant but face incremental erosion at the margins. Our influence will feel less like automatic leadership and more like earned coalition-building, issue by issue.

That’s not necessarily a tragedy. A more plural, negotiated order can be healthier ... and America can thrive in it ... if we adapt. The path back to credibility runs through patience, institutional discipline, and performance. Deliver five years of steady policy across administrations, anchor it in law, and avoid gratuitous unilateralism. Make fewer promises; keep all of them. In a suspicious world, boring is powerful.

We won’t talk our way out of the trust deficit. We’ll have to live our way out of it, one met deadline, funded pledge, and honored commitment at a time.

- Julia O’Hara 2025

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