Where Harris and Trump stand on foreign policy: Election voter guide

Their views of the world, and how to handle its troubles and challenges, paint a sharp contrast between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Trump.

Harris hews largely to traditional Democratic Party values but with a modern touch. She favors multilateralism and embraces strong U.S. alliances while shining new light on global issues such as climate change, women’s rights and food insecurity.

Trump, who eschews much of the Republican Party’s orthodoxy, promotes an “America First” approach that often translates into “America Alone.” As president, he rejected many traditional allies and flattered some of the world’s strongmen and autocrats. He de-emphasized social issues such as human rights while relying heavily on punitive measures including economic sanctions and tariffs to confront rivals and allies alike, including China and Mexico.

Here is a look at several of the world’s regions and what policies each presidential candidate might pursue there.

Israel-Hamas and the Gaza war

More than a year has passed since Hamas-led militants poured into southern Israel in an attack that left about 1,200 people dead and took around 250 hostage, unleashing Israel’s brutal war in the Gaza Strip. Gaza health officials say Israel’s attacks have killed more than 42,000 Palestinians in the territory. The Health Ministry figures do not differentiate between combatants and civilians, but officials say at least half are women and children.

The U.S., Egypt and Qatar have labored exhaustively to try to bring Hamas and the Israeli government to terms that would end fighting and free the hostages, as well as release hundreds of Palestinians in Israeli jails. But a cease-fire remains elusive.

Harris and Trump agree that the Israel-Hamas war must come to an end. But they differ on how that should happen and what the future of Gaza should look like.

Harris supports President Biden’s ongoing cease-fire talks, which envision Israel withdrawing from the coastal enclave and a “clear pathway” to the formation of an independent Palestinian state. She has also led the administration in voicing support for the Palestinian people of Gaza, who face starvation, disease and widespread destruction of homes and livelihoods. However, she does not support calls to stop shipping weapons to Israel.

Trump has said he would not oppose an Israeli military victory in Gaza and has not ruled out some form of Israeli rule or occupation of the enclave. When he was president, he did not actively support a Palestinian state. In fact, he granted Israel a long list of concessions, including transfer of the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to the disputed holy city of Jerusalem and recognition of Israeli control of the Golan Heights, seized from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War.

One of Trump’s signature foreign policy achievements was the 2020 Abraham Accords, in which the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain recognized Israel and opened diplomatic ties, the first countries in the Arab world to do so since Egypt and Jordan decades ago. But powerhouse Saudi Arabia, considered the crowning jewel of regional normalization, has not followed suit and is demanding such a step be contingent on a Palestinian state. The Biden-Harris administration advocates for that, but Trump has not announced an opinion.

The Israel-Hamas war has intensified other conflicts in the Middle East, including attacks between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.

In a major escalation, Israel invaded southern Lebanon this October and began bombarding Beirut and other population centers in response to Hezbollah rocket attacks on northern Israel.

Lebanon, Hezbollah and Iran

As president, Trump jettisoned the landmark Iran nuclear deal, signed in 2015 by President Obama and five other world powers. It had successfully curbed Iran’s nuclear program, but Trump claimed it did not go far enough in stopping other Iranian “malign behavior,” such as support for regional militias like Hezbollah in Lebanon, which in turn pose a threat to Israel.

With Trump pulling the U.S. out of the deal, Iran went on a spree of enriching uranium, a key ingredient in the making of a nuclear bomb. This continued after Biden took office, and his efforts to revive the deal failed. Today, Iran is believed to be on the cusp of being able to produce a nuclear weapon. Trump’s policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran, which also included numerous economic sanctions, never altered the Islamic Republic’s pattern of support for militant groups. Repression in Iran, especially of women and dissidents, only grew.

Neither leading presidential candidate is likely to make substantial changes in Iran policy for the foreseeable future — unless the widening Middle East conflict draws Israel and Iran into greater direct conflict, especially after the two countries’ recent exchanges of ballistic missiles and other armaments.

Harris has condemned Iran’s support for Hezbollah and Hamas and its threats to Israel. And she helped push for Iran’s removal from the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.

Ukraine and Russia

Nearly three years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the war is a sharp point of disagreement between Harris and Trump.

While Harris has repeatedly pledged support for the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump refused during the Sept. 10 U.S. presidential debate to say whether he even wanted Ukraine to win.

Trump has said, while offering no details, that he would quickly bring the conflict to an end. Ukraine interprets that as meaning he might try to use a potential cutoff of U.S. military aid as a way of coercing Ukraine into a resolution with terms highly favorable to Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Trump shocked U.S. officials and allies in 2018 when he stood next to Putin in Finland and questioned U.S. intelligence showing Russia had interfered in the 2016 U.S. election. And Trump was impeached in 2019 for withholding military aid from Ukraine while calling on Zelensky to investigate Hunter Biden, son of his then-rival for the White House.)

Harris said in the debate that if Trump had been president when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, “Putin would be sitting in Kyiv right now.” And she declared that Trump’s affinity for strongmen was actually a display of weakness. The Russian leader, she told him, “would eat you for lunch.”

More recently, Trump has sharpened his personal attacks on Ukraine’s leader, depicted Ukraine as broken and defeated, and repeated without explanation his assertion that under his own leadership, the war would never have taken place.

In a speech in North Carolina, Trump accused Zelensky of “making little nasty aspersions toward your favorite president” — himself — and declared that Ukraine, except for Kyiv, the capital, is “in rubble.” (While Russia holds about one-fifth of Ukrainian territory and has launched air attacks against most major population centers, the country has a number of regional metropolises where bomb damage is localized and municipal services still function relatively normally.)

As the election nears, Trump has continued to describe his own relationship with Putin in favorable terms. Even while portraying the Russian leader as “no angel,” as he did in the North Carolina speech, Trump’s tone tends to be admiring, in line with his depiction of other authoritarian figures.

Responding to reporting in a new Bob Woodward book that Trump had as many as seven direct discussions with Putin since leaving the White House, the former president said, “Well, I don’t comment on that, but I will tell you that if I did, it’s a smart thing.”

Latin America

Except for when it comes up in discussions and claims about immigration, Latin America has largely been absent from the foreign policy debate during the presidential race.

Neither candidate knows Latin America well, although Harris spent much of her vice presidency seeking to address the root causes of migration from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, and Trump has forged relationships with far-right leaders from the region including Argentine President Javier Milei and former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

Trump and Harris align in their opposition to the autocratic governments in Venezuela and Nicaragua. They diverge when it comes to trade with the region.

As president, Trump renegotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement, which helped elevate Mexico to become the United States’ top trading partner. He has been critical of the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico and Canada, and has shown an eagerness to enact tariffs to try to leverage foreign policy goals. In 2018, he taxed imports of steel and aluminum from Mexico and Canada, and briefly threatened to impose tariffs on all Mexican imports to punish the country for what he said was its inaction on migration. Trump says that if he is elected to a second term, he will impose a blanket tariff of up to 20% on all global imports.

Harris warns that the blanket tariff would drive up consumer prices and hurt the American economy. But that does not mean she supports unbridled free trade. As a senator in 2020, Harris voted against passage of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which replaced NAFTA, saying it did not include enough worker and environmental protections.

Both candidates have vowed to take a hard stance on criminal groups from Latin America, although their approaches might differ. As California attorney general, Harris prosecuted cartel members and expanded a task force focused on cross-border crimes. Trump has said he would support airstrikes against gangs in Mexico and proposed sending special ops into the country to kill drug kingpins.

Europe and NATO

European allies still consider Harris somewhat of an unknown quality — she has been a familiar figure as vice president, but there’s wide recognition that her role was to give advice to the president, not to make decisions. She has spoken repeatedly, however, of the importance of nurturing alliances.

Trump, on the other hand, has repeatedly denigrated the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union. NATO allies openly fear that a second Trump term would result in the United States pulling out of the alliance altogether.

And Trump left some Western leaders nonplussed when he offered up Hungary’s Viktor Orban — who has worked systematically to undermine his own country’s democracy and is a major irritant to almost every other member of the EU — as a character reference. In the debate, Trump cited the support of the “smart prime minister of Hungary” as proof that world leaders respect him.

China

Trump and Harris have taken tough stances on China, one of America’s biggest rivals in trade, defense and geopolitical alliances. The candidates have accused China of intellectual property theft and unfair subsidization in tech and manufacturing that put U.S. businesses at a disadvantage.

In 2018, then-President Trump launched a trade war with China by imposing tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of Chinese imports, and he has vowed to increase those substantially if elected. At the same time, Trump has praised Chinese President Xi Jinping — who has near-absolute power — as “brilliant” and strong, saying admiringly that he rules China’s population “with an iron fist.” In 2020, Trump said of his relationship with Xi: “He’s for China; I’m for the U.S. — but other than that, we love each other.”

Harris is largely expected to maintain Biden’s approach on trade restrictions — Biden kept Trump tariffs and raised some this year, including 100% on electric vehicles, 50% on solar cells and 25% on EV batteries and materials. Harris has called Trump’s plans to greatly expand tariffs a tax on consumers, who economists say bear the cost of such policies. She is also expected to strengthen diplomatic ties in the Asia-Pacific region to combat growing Chinese influence there, and she has expressed support for maintaining the status quo on Taiwan — one of the flash points in U.S.-China relations.

Trump’s less predictable approach to foreign policy may alienate U.S. allies in Asia. How he will handle relations with Taiwan is also unclear. Under Trump, the U.S. increased arms sales and security cooperation with the democratic island that China claims as its territory. However, Trump has said Taiwan should pay the U.S. for military protection.

North Korea and South Korea

During Trump’s first term, he and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un went from exchanging insults and threats of military action on Twitter to sending each other what Trump called “love letters,” in which Kim emphasized their “deep and special friendship.”

And although Trump’s 2018 and 2019 summits with Kim ended without a denuclearization deal — and prompted criticisms they were little more than glorified photo ops — questions now hang over whether a second-term Trump would try to pick up where they left off.

Unlike the first try, which was made possible by a pro-engagement South Korean president, a second attempt would likely run into resistance from today’s hard-line South Korean administration.

A Harris presidency, on the other hand, would likely see an extension of the Biden administration’s approach: sanctions and increased military deterrence.

Unlike Harris, who reaffirmed Washington’s “extended deterrence commitment” to Seoul after visiting the Korean Demilitarized Zone in 2022, Trump has advocated ending joint military drills with South Korea — and hinted he might withdraw U.S. troops from the peninsula if Seoul doesn’t pay more for their upkeep. After Trump’s first summit with Kim, in 2018, he shocked allies with an announcement that the U.S. would halt the joint large-scale military drills with South Korea, echoing North Korea’s language in describing the exercises as “provocative.” The massive drills resumed in 2022.

Wilkinson reported from Washington, King from Berlin and Jerusalem, Linthicum from Mexico City, Yang from Taipei and Kim from Seoul.