Since the Second World War, U.S. governments had used trade politics to open markets abroad and for strategic purposes. This is especially true for free trade agreements (FTAs). Since signing its first FTA in 1984, the United States had increasingly used FTAs as an economic tool to accomplish geopolitical objectives. President Trump, however, decided to take another path. He intends to make America great again by pulling out of most current FTA initiatives, most prominently the TPP with other Pacific-Rim countries and the TTIP with US closest ally, the European Union. In this paper I ask how exactly did U.S. FTAs relate to security concerns in the past and what political developments led Donald Trump to turn away from this decade-long approach? I discuss the linkages between FTAs and security concerns and the strategic motives behind the TPP and the TTIP. I show that security policy has indeed been a crucial argument for most U.S. FTAs; but that President Trump made it a top priority to reverse this strategy.
