Donald Trump and the Trump administration radically altered a number of international policies and behaviors of the United States, and changed the position of the United States on many international agreements, including environmental agreements, trade agreements, military agreements, and human rights agreements. This book studies of the effect of those actions, and Trump's style of behavior, on the standing of the United States in the global community. In eighteen individual case studies the authors examine traditional relationships between their countries and the United States prior to the Trump election, including areas of tension and traditional areas of agreement and cooperation. They address expectations about what the outcome of the 2016 American election would be, and the immediate reaction to the election's outcome. They explore how responses to American policies varied in their country, and whether any American initiatives were especially controversial. And they explore how the relations between their nation and the United States changed over the Trump years. The authors reflect on whether anything was permanently lost or gained by the end of the Trump years, and speculate on the lasting consequences of Trump foreign policies and international behavior for America's standing overseas.

Executive orders and proclamations afford presidents an independent means of controlling a wide range of activities in the federal government-yet they are not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution. In fact, the controversial edicts known as universal presidential directives seem to violate the separation of powers by enabling the commander-in-chief to bypass Congress and enact his own policy preferences. As Clinton White House counsel Paul Begala remarked on the numerous executive orders signed by the president during his second term: "Stroke of the pen. Law of the land. Kinda cool." Although public awareness of unilateral presidential directives has been growing over the last decade-sparked in part by Barack Obama's use of executive orders and presidential memoranda to reverse many of his predecessor's policies as well as by the number of unilateral directives George W. Bush promulgated for the "War on Terror"-Graham G. Dodds reminds us that not only has every single president issued executive orders, such orders have figured in many of the most significant episodes in American political history. In Take Up Your Pen, Dodds offers one of the first historical treatments of this executive prerogative and explores the source of this authority; how executive orders were legitimized, accepted, and routinized; and what impact presidential directives have had on our understanding of the presidency, American politics, and political development. By tracing the rise of a more activist central government-first advanced in the Progressive Era by Theodore Roosevelt-Dodds illustrates the growing use of these directives throughout a succession of presidencies. More important, Take Up Your Pen questions how unilateral presidential directives fit the conception of democracy and the needs of American citizens.