The common wisdom is that Donald Trump’s foreign policy will be a disaster for human rights. Certainly his penchant for embracing autocrats and breaching norms bodes poorly, such as his outrageous proposal to force two million Palestinians out of Gaza – which would be a blatant war crime – or his suggestion that Ukraine is to blame for Russia’s invasion. But Trump also likes to cut a deal, as shown by his paradoxically positive role in securing the current (precarious) Gaza ceasefire. If Trump the dealmaker can be nudged in the right direction, he might, against all odds, be brought to play a productive role for human rights.
As executive director of Human Rights Watch, I spent more than three decades devising strategies to pressure or cajole leaders to better respect rights. I have dealt with brutal dictators, self-serving autocrats and misguided democrats. My experience shows that there is always an angle – something the leader cares about – that can be used to steer them in a more rights-respecting direction.
Trump is no exception. In his case, the key is his self-image as a master dealmaker. The challenge is to make his reputation depend on securing deals that strengthen human rights.
The Gaza ceasefire accord is illustrative. The same deal, in essence, was on the table since May 2024, when Joe Biden first advanced it. But the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was reluctant to accept it because two far-right ministers threatened to topple his government if he did. Biden was never willing to use his obvious leverage – conditioning US arms sales and military aid – to tip the balance toward a deal.
To change Netanyahu’s calculus, it took Trump’s threat that there would be “all hell to pay” if there were no deal. He never spelled out what he meant, but if a deal was sought by even Trump, who in his first term was as pro-Israel as they come, Netanyahu could argue to his ministers that he had no choice but to comply.
Yet Trump seeks a bigger deal. He wants Saudi Arabia to normalise relations with Israel as part of his effort to build a unified front against Iran. But the Saudi crown prince, attentive to Saudi public opinion, has said that a prerequisite is at least a clear path to a Palestinian state – a position that the Saudi government reiterated even after Trump’s proposal to ethnically cleanse Gaza. Other key US partners in the region, including Egypt, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates, are also pressing for a state. Netanyahu’s response has long been, in effect, over my dead body.
As a close friend of Israel, Trump is well positioned to change Netanyahu’s mind. Netanyahu ignored appeals for restraint from Biden knowing that he had a strong base of more conservative support in the US, his most important benefactor by far. But if he crosses Trump, there will be nowhere else to turn.
Trump could yet play a similar role in Ukraine, now that the US and Russia have announced that they intend to start formal consultations on a peace deal on Ukraine. Despite his latest claim that Ukraine should have capitulated to Putin early on, Trump’s position is that the war with Russia has gone on long enough, and that the enormous loss of life is not worth the modest chunks of territory in eastern Ukraine that have been changing hands.
Russia and Ukraine have very different views about how the conflict should end. The Ukrainian government wants to preserve its democracy and sovereignty by obtaining security guarantees from at least a significant segment of Nato nations. Vladimir Putin wants to snuff out Ukraine’s democracy, ending an enticingly dangerous model for Russians, and turn the country into a vassal state of the Kremlin.
Because of Trump’s peculiar admiration for him, Putin had every incentive to keep fighting with the hope that Trump would stop selling arms to Ukraine and force it to surrender. But if, despite Putin’s efforts to bamboozle and flatter him, Trump were to come out in favour of a deal closer to Ukraine’s terms, Putin would have a hard time resisting. Losing soldiers and equipment in unsustainable numbers, Putin could no longer hope that a sympathetic US president would extract him from his disastrous decision to invade. A deal could be had.
When it comes to China, Trump seems to care little about human rights, going so far as to stop US diplomatic involvement with the UN Human Rights Council, even though Beijing today poses the greatest threat to the global human rights system. Rather, Trump wants to reduce the trade deficit and avoid Beijing’s monopolisation of key strategic industries. Indeed, Trump was even reported to have told the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, that detaining Uyghurs “was exactly the right thing to do” – a reference to the mass detention of about one million of the 11 million Uyghurs in Xinjiang to force them to abandon their language, religion and culture.
But Marco Rubio, Trump’s secretary of state, has been far more concerned about human rights in China. Most significantly, Rubio as senator sponsored the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which presumptively bars all imports from Xinjiang.
In crafting a deal with China, why not look at Uyghur forced labour as not only a serious human rights violation but also an unfair government subsidy, with an effect similar to cheap government loans and concessionary tax benefits in reducing producer costs? Indeed, it appears to play a particularly significant role in polysilicon, which is used for solar panels – one of the markets that Beijing is trying to corner. If Trump were to insist as part of a bargain with Beijing that the Uyghur forced-labour subsidy end, he could reduce the US trade deficit with China while curbing the Chinese government’s most serious case of repression.
Trump’s mercurial temperament remains an obstacle to any of these deals, but as with other difficult leaders I have addressed, the key is to focus on what he wants. He is concerned with his reputation as a dealmaker. He seeks a Nobel peace prize for a Middle East deal. He does not want possible appeasement of Putin to leave him tarred as the Neville Chamberlain of the 21st century. He does not want to be snookered again by Xi Jinping, who promised during Trump’s last term to reduce the trade deficit by buying more American goods and never followed through.
A master dealmaker wants to be known for making good deals. And from a human rights perspective, there are such deals to be made. The task is to ensure that Trump sees that his reputation depends on securing them.
Kenneth Roth is a former executive director of Human Rights Watch and author of Righting Wrongs
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
