MW The 'Trump doctrine' demands the U.S. get a better deal - and it's paying dividends

By Charlie Garcia

How a full-page newspaper advertisement in 1987 became American foreign policy

Under President Donald Trump, America remains the world's dominant power, but dominance has been monetized.

The White House published its National Security Strategy in December. It declares that 'the United States will insist on being treated fairly by other countries.'

In September 1987, Donald Trump paid $94,801 for full-page advertisements in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Boston Globe. He was 41 years old, not yet a politician. Outside of New York City real-estate circles, he was not much of a celebrity. But Trump was angry about American foreign policy - and this was how much it cost to tell America about it.

The headline: "There's nothing wrong with America's Foreign Defense Policy that a little backbone can't cure." The demand: that Japan and Saudi Arabia either pay for American protection or lose it.

The foreign-policy establishment did what it always does when confronted with ideas from outside: It held a cocktail party and didn't invite Trump. Washington treated the ads as a curiosity. A rich guy's tantrum. Not serious strategic thought. That requires a Ph.D. from Georgetown, a fellowship at Brookings and prose so dense it could stop artillery. Gold letters on buildings disqualify you.

Thirty-eight years later, the tantrum became doctrine. On Jan. 3 at 2 a.m. in Caracas, Nicolás Maduro discovered what that means. Venezuela's former leader is currently in U.S. custody in New York, awaiting arraignment on narcoterrorism charges.

The gold letters won.

Transactional hegemony

Traditional alliance leaders pretend to care about shared values. Trump cares about shared invoices.

Every consequential presidency produces a doctrine. The Truman Doctrine committed America to containing Soviet expansion. The Reagan Doctrine embraced rollback, not merely containing the Soviets but actively supporting insurgencies inside their empire to reverse their gains. The Bush Doctrine, forged after September 11, made pre-emption and democracy promotion twin pillars of American security.

Each doctrine answered a question: What is America's purpose in the world?

Trump's answer is elemental: to get a better deal.

This is not isolationism. Isolationists don't send carrier groups to the Caribbean, strike Iranian nuclear facilities or extract foreign presidents in the dead of night. Trump has used military force more aggressively than any president since George H.W. Bush.

Nor is it traditional alliance leadership. Traditional alliance leaders pretend to care about shared values. Trump cares about shared invoices.

On Dec. 4, 2025, the White House published its National Security Strategy. It declares that "the United States will insist on being treated fairly by other countries. We will no longer tolerate, and can no longer afford, free-riding, trade imbalances, predatory economic practices, and other impositions on our nation's historic goodwill."

This is transactional hegemony. America remains the world's dominant power, but dominance has been monetized. Every benefit the U.S. provides has a price. Every relationship has terms. Every deal is evaluated by what America can extract.

The United States has the leverage

The United States is now the world's largest oil producer - more than Saudi Arabia and Russia combined.

What makes the "Trump doctrine" possible now, versus when it was merely aspirational in 1987, is leverage. America holds cards today it did not hold then.

U.S. crude oil (CL00) production hit a record 13.87 million barrels per day in October 2025. The United States is now the world's largest oil producer - more than Saudi Arabia and Russia combined at current output. "Carrying oil we don't need," Trump wrote in 1987. That was aspiration. It's now fact. The U.S. engages the Gulf States because it chooses to, not because it must. And when America does engage, it sets the terms.

The U.S. dollar's dominance extends into the digital realm through two instruments critics have barely noticed. The Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, established by executive order in March 2025, treats cryptocurrency as a reserve asset. Even more consequential is the Genius Act, which Trump signed last July, requiring dollar-denominated stablecoins to hold reserves in U.S. Treasury bills.

The numbers are staggering. Tether (USDTUSD), the largest stablecoin issuer, holds $135 billion in U.S. Treasury bills. That's more than Germany holds in American debt. The stablecoin market exceeds $300 billion and is growing 50% annually. Every crypto trader in Singapore, every remittance sender in the Philippines, every business using digital dollars for cross-border payments is, indirectly, buying U.S. debt. America in effect has privatized dollar hegemony. The crypto bros are working for Uncle Sam now. They just don't know it.

And the U.S. is demonstrating the willingness to use force. In June, Operation Midnight Hammer sent B-2 bombers to strike Iran's nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. A Pentagon assessment found Tehran's program was set back two years. Operation Absolute Resolve extracted Maduro from his palace. When the United States says it will do something, there is now a reasonable chance it will actually do it.

Energy. Dollar. Force. These are the cards. The Trump doctrine plays them.

'Or else' works better than 'pretty please'

The Germans amended their constitution for defense spending. Read that sentence again.

The ledger, 11 months into Trump's second term, shows payments coming due across every theater.

NATO has committed to spending 5% of GDP on defense by 2035. Two years ago, this figure would have been dismissed as American fantasy, probably by people sipping wine at Davos.

Germany, the most resistant of allies, passed a constitutional amendment last March exempting defense spending from its cherished debt limits. Berlin has pledged EUR500 billion in infrastructure and uncapped defense borrowing, with the explicit goal of building the strongest army in Europe by decade's end.

The Germans amended their constitution for defense spending. Read that sentence again.

Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman visited Washington in November, his first trip to the U.S. since 2018, after the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi killing made him persona non grata in polite circles. Polite circles are not known for their oil reserves.

MBS left Washington with F-35 fighters, making Saudi Arabia the first Arab nation to acquire them. He left with a civil nuclear cooperation agreement. He left with designation as a major non-NATO ally. The price of admission: almost $1 trillion in investment commitments to the U.S., from artificial-intelligence data centers to defense purchases to energy infrastructure.

Japan, which Trump singled out in that 1987 advertisement, is paying through JERA , its largest energy company, which signed $200 billion in liquefied natural gas purchase agreements with U.S. producers. Those are 20-year commitments with the potential to create 50,000 American jobs.

The dependency Trump identified in a newspaper ad four decades ago has been converted into leverage, and the leverage into revenue.

For 30 years, American presidents asked Europeans to spend more. They sent diplomatic cables. They gave speeches. They expressed concern. Trump threatened to leave them. Now the Europeans are spending.

It turns out Europeans were always capable of defending themselves. They just needed the right motivation.

Who benefits

Venezuela isn't just an oil producer. The country is rich in rare-earth elements and natural gas.

Venezuela holds 303 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the largest on Earth, accounting for 17% of global supply. This is heavy crude that U.S. refineries were literally built to process. For 25 years, that Venezuelan oil was locked behind a hostile regime, Soviet clients, then Chinese partners - always someone else's leverage against us.

At 2 a.m. on Jan. 3 it became America's to develop.

"We're going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure," Trump said hours after Maduro's capture.

But Venezuela isn't just oil. The Orinoco Mining Arc, covering 112,000 square kilometers, contains an estimated 300,000 metric tons of rare-earth elements, coltan worth $100 billion, and 200 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

These aren't abstract commodities. Every F-35 jet requires 920 pounds of rare-earth elements. Every Virginia-class submarine needs 9,200 pounds. China controls 90% of global rare-earth processing, and it banned exports for military end-uses in December 2025. A Chinese delegation was in the building with Maduro hours before U.S. forces arrived. That supply chain just broke.

The Trump administration will favor those it favors.

The obvious beneficiary is Chevron $(CVX)$, which maintained limited operations under Biden-era licenses and knows the terrain. Chevron now has access to reserves it didn't have on Friday. That's what leverage looks like when you stop being polite about it.

But Venezuelan infrastructure is destroyed. Someone must rebuild it. That means oilfield services: Halliburton $(HAL)$, SLB $(SLB)$, Baker Hughes $(BKR)$.

These companies have the expertise to restore oilfields that have deteriorated for a decade under mismanagement and sanctions. U.S. Gulf Coast refineries, with 9.6 million barrels per day of capacity, were designed specifically for heavy Venezuelan crude. Valero Energy $(VLO)$, Marathon Petroleum $(MPC)$, Exxon Mobil's (XOM) facility in Baton Rouge, La. - these plants will run better with Venezuelan feedstock than without it.

MW The 'Trump doctrine' demands the U.S. get a better deal - and it's paying dividends

By Charlie Garcia

How a full-page newspaper advertisement in 1987 became American foreign policy

Under President Donald Trump, America remains the world's dominant power, but dominance has been monetized.

The White House published its National Security Strategy in December. It declares that 'the United States will insist on being treated fairly by other countries.'

In September 1987, Donald Trump paid $94,801 for full-page advertisements in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Boston Globe. He was 41 years old, not yet a politician. Outside of New York City real-estate circles, he was not much of a celebrity. But Trump was angry about American foreign policy - and this was how much it cost to tell America about it.

The headline: "There's nothing wrong with America's Foreign Defense Policy that a little backbone can't cure." The demand: that Japan and Saudi Arabia either pay for American protection or lose it.

The foreign-policy establishment did what it always does when confronted with ideas from outside: It held a cocktail party and didn't invite Trump. Washington treated the ads as a curiosity. A rich guy's tantrum. Not serious strategic thought. That requires a Ph.D. from Georgetown, a fellowship at Brookings and prose so dense it could stop artillery. Gold letters on buildings disqualify you.

Thirty-eight years later, the tantrum became doctrine. On Jan. 3 at 2 a.m. in Caracas, Nicolás Maduro discovered what that means. Venezuela's former leader is currently in U.S. custody in New York, awaiting arraignment on narcoterrorism charges.

The gold letters won.

Transactional hegemony

Traditional alliance leaders pretend to care about shared values. Trump cares about shared invoices.

Every consequential presidency produces a doctrine. The Truman Doctrine committed America to containing Soviet expansion. The Reagan Doctrine embraced rollback, not merely containing the Soviets but actively supporting insurgencies inside their empire to reverse their gains. The Bush Doctrine, forged after September 11, made pre-emption and democracy promotion twin pillars of American security.

Each doctrine answered a question: What is America's purpose in the world?

Trump's answer is elemental: to get a better deal.

This is not isolationism. Isolationists don't send carrier groups to the Caribbean, strike Iranian nuclear facilities or extract foreign presidents in the dead of night. Trump has used military force more aggressively than any president since George H.W. Bush.

Nor is it traditional alliance leadership. Traditional alliance leaders pretend to care about shared values. Trump cares about shared invoices.

On Dec. 4, 2025, the White House published its National Security Strategy. It declares that "the United States will insist on being treated fairly by other countries. We will no longer tolerate, and can no longer afford, free-riding, trade imbalances, predatory economic practices, and other impositions on our nation's historic goodwill."

This is transactional hegemony. America remains the world's dominant power, but dominance has been monetized. Every benefit the U.S. provides has a price. Every relationship has terms. Every deal is evaluated by what America can extract.

The United States has the leverage

The United States is now the world's largest oil producer - more than Saudi Arabia and Russia combined.

What makes the "Trump doctrine" possible now, versus when it was merely aspirational in 1987, is leverage. America holds cards today it did not hold then.

U.S. crude oil (CL00) production hit a record 13.87 million barrels per day in October 2025. The United States is now the world's largest oil producer - more than Saudi Arabia and Russia combined at current output. "Carrying oil we don't need," Trump wrote in 1987. That was aspiration. It's now fact. The U.S. engages the Gulf States because it chooses to, not because it must. And when America does engage, it sets the terms.

The U.S. dollar's dominance extends into the digital realm through two instruments critics have barely noticed. The Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, established by executive order in March 2025, treats cryptocurrency as a reserve asset. Even more consequential is the Genius Act, which Trump signed last July, requiring dollar-denominated stablecoins to hold reserves in U.S. Treasury bills.

The numbers are staggering. Tether (USDTUSD), the largest stablecoin issuer, holds $135 billion in U.S. Treasury bills. That's more than Germany holds in American debt. The stablecoin market exceeds $300 billion and is growing 50% annually. Every crypto trader in Singapore, every remittance sender in the Philippines, every business using digital dollars for cross-border payments is, indirectly, buying U.S. debt. America in effect has privatized dollar hegemony. The crypto bros are working for Uncle Sam now. They just don't know it.

And the U.S. is demonstrating the willingness to use force. In June, Operation Midnight Hammer sent B-2 bombers to strike Iran's nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. A Pentagon assessment found Tehran's program was set back two years. Operation Absolute Resolve extracted Maduro from his palace. When the United States says it will do something, there is now a reasonable chance it will actually do it.

Energy. Dollar. Force. These are the cards. The Trump doctrine plays them.

'Or else' works better than 'pretty please'

The Germans amended their constitution for defense spending. Read that sentence again.

The ledger, 11 months into Trump's second term, shows payments coming due across every theater.

NATO has committed to spending 5% of GDP on defense by 2035. Two years ago, this figure would have been dismissed as American fantasy, probably by people sipping wine at Davos.

Germany, the most resistant of allies, passed a constitutional amendment last March exempting defense spending from its cherished debt limits. Berlin has pledged EUR500 billion in infrastructure and uncapped defense borrowing, with the explicit goal of building the strongest army in Europe by decade's end.

The Germans amended their constitution for defense spending. Read that sentence again.

Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman visited Washington in November, his first trip to the U.S. since 2018, after the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi killing made him persona non grata in polite circles. Polite circles are not known for their oil reserves.

MBS left Washington with F-35 fighters, making Saudi Arabia the first Arab nation to acquire them. He left with a civil nuclear cooperation agreement. He left with designation as a major non-NATO ally. The price of admission: almost $1 trillion in investment commitments to the U.S., from artificial-intelligence data centers to defense purchases to energy infrastructure.

Japan, which Trump singled out in that 1987 advertisement, is paying through JERA , its largest energy company, which signed $200 billion in liquefied natural gas purchase agreements with U.S. producers. Those are 20-year commitments with the potential to create 50,000 American jobs.

The dependency Trump identified in a newspaper ad four decades ago has been converted into leverage, and the leverage into revenue.

For 30 years, American presidents asked Europeans to spend more. They sent diplomatic cables. They gave speeches. They expressed concern. Trump threatened to leave them. Now the Europeans are spending.

It turns out Europeans were always capable of defending themselves. They just needed the right motivation.

Who benefits

Venezuela isn't just an oil producer. The country is rich in rare-earth elements and natural gas.

Venezuela holds 303 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the largest on Earth, accounting for 17% of global supply. This is heavy crude that U.S. refineries were literally built to process. For 25 years, that Venezuelan oil was locked behind a hostile regime, Soviet clients, then Chinese partners - always someone else's leverage against us.

At 2 a.m. on Jan. 3 it became America's to develop.

"We're going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure," Trump said hours after Maduro's capture.

But Venezuela isn't just oil. The Orinoco Mining Arc, covering 112,000 square kilometers, contains an estimated 300,000 metric tons of rare-earth elements, coltan worth $100 billion, and 200 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

These aren't abstract commodities. Every F-35 jet requires 920 pounds of rare-earth elements. Every Virginia-class submarine needs 9,200 pounds. China controls 90% of global rare-earth processing, and it banned exports for military end-uses in December 2025. A Chinese delegation was in the building with Maduro hours before U.S. forces arrived. That supply chain just broke.

The Trump administration will favor those it favors.

The obvious beneficiary is Chevron (CVX), which maintained limited operations under Biden-era licenses and knows the terrain. Chevron now has access to reserves it didn't have on Friday. That's what leverage looks like when you stop being polite about it.

But Venezuelan infrastructure is destroyed. Someone must rebuild it. That means oilfield services: Halliburton (HAL), SLB (SLB), Baker Hughes (BKR).

These companies have the expertise to restore oilfields that have deteriorated for a decade under mismanagement and sanctions. U.S. Gulf Coast refineries, with 9.6 million barrels per day of capacity, were designed specifically for heavy Venezuelan crude. Valero Energy (VLO), Marathon Petroleum (MPC), Exxon Mobil's (XOM) facility in Baton Rouge, La. - these plants will run better with Venezuelan feedstock than without it.

(MORE TO FOLLOW) Dow Jones Newswires

January 05, 2026 12:36 ET (17:36 GMT)

MW The 'Trump doctrine' demands the U.S. get a -2-

Construction and engineering firms follow the oil companies. Fluor $(FLR)$, Bechtel and KBR $(KBR)$ rebuilt Iraq. These companies have experience operating in post-conflict environments where American interests require American contractors. The Trump administration will favor those it favors.

Banks with Latin America exposure are positioned to finance the reconstruction. Citigroup (C) has deep roots in the region. JPMorgan Chase's $(JPM)$ emerging-markets desk will be busy. When American companies spend billions in Venezuela, American banks will intermediate the capital flows.

How to judge the Trump doctrine

Every agreement Trump has reached rests on his credibility, his relationships, his willingness to walk away. What happens when he's gone?

By traditional measures of statecraft, the Trump doctrine has achieved more in 11 months than most presidencies achieve in eight years. Iran's nuclear program is crippled. China has made concessions on rare earths, soybeans and fentanyl. Europe is rearming. A dictator who ran a narco-state for a decade is in U.S. custody. Critics who warned Trump would burn down the world are now reduced to arguing that the fire marshal is using improper procedures.

But the doctrine is an investment thesis, and investment theses require time horizons.

The question it cannot answer: Do deals outlast dealmakers?

Every agreement Trump has reached rests on his credibility, his relationships, his willingness to walk away. What happens when he's gone? Does Saudi Arabia remain aligned with America, or renegotiate with the next president? Does Germany sustain defense spending, or revert when the pressure lifts? Does Venezuela stabilize, or descend into the chaos that has followed every American intervention that ousted a strongman without a plan for what came next?

Ronald Reagan's presidential achievements endured because they were institutionalized - embedded in defense budgets, alliance structures and ideological commitments that successors shared. The Cold War consensus outlasted any single president because it was a consensus. The Trump doctrine is not a consensus. It is one man's conviction, almost four decades in the making - imposed on a world that did not share it until he forced them to.

The international order that America built after 1945 was not charity. It was infrastructure. America built the casino and set the house rules. This was not generosity. It was the best business model in the history of great powers. The Trump doctrine extracts even more value from this infrastructure by threatening to abandon it. But infrastructure that is neglected eventually fails.

The Trump doctrine bets that U.S. leverage, properly monetized, generates returns that subsidizing the world never did. Whether tactical victories accumulate into strategic success or merely postpone strategic reckoning, we cannot yet know.

Ask again in four years.

But this much is certain. In September 1987, a real-estate developer from Queens paid nearly $100,000 to tell America that the world was laughing at us.

Nobody's laughing now.

Charlie Garcia is founder and a managing partner of R360, a peer-to-peer organization for individuals and families with a net worth of $100 million or more. He holds positions in SLB, XOM, CRCL and bitcoin.

Agree? Disagree? Share your comments with Charlie Garcia at charlie@R360Global.com. Your letter may be published anonymously in the weekly "Dear Charlie" reader mailbag.

By emailing your comments to Charlie Garcia, you agree to have them published on MarketWatch anonymously, or with your first name if you give permission. You understand and agree that Dow Jones & Co., the publisher of MarketWatch, may use your story, or versions of it, in all media and platforms, including via third parties.

More from Charlie Garcia:

China is using silver as an economic weapon. What that means for investors and prices.

America once had enough silver to meet its needs. But that's been outsourced, too.

Quantum computing works - now investors will see if the stocks do too

China is quietly destroying the dollar - and that'll cost you. Fight back with these money moves.

-Charlie Garcia

This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 05, 2026 12:36 ET (17:36 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.