Trumping Development: Selective Delinking and Coercive Governmentality in US-Africa Relations

Globalization is one of the most important socioeconomic processes of recent decades, but it has elicited a reactionary backlash in some countries, leading to calls for reform. President Trump's rise to power in the United States and his determination to rewrite his country's involvement in globalization have brought substantial changes to foreign policy, including the US–Africa relationship. His administration's policies appear undeveloped, but we can determine distinct trends and tendencies. This article examines the effects of these policies on Africa to argue that they go beyond a return to the benign neglect shown by many US presidents before the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, to include a malign governmental gaze, exemplifying a retreat from US global hegemony through selective delinking in aid, and manifesting economic and security interests in Africa in particularly detrimental ways.