Three Pillars of Trump: The State Department

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What is happening to American diplomacy? It is the job of the State Department to explain to the world what America stands for, and manage the nuts and bolts of its international relations. But President Trump is uninterested in the diplomatic arts; he has proposed drastic cuts to the department and tweets foreign policy pronouncements seemingly on a whim. He has also had a rocky relationship with his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who has been accused of gutting his own agency in the process of redesigning it to make it leaner and more efficient. That is still a work in progress, but the State Department ends Trump’s first year less resourced, less empowered, and less important than it was. What does this mean for the way US foreign policy is run, and for American influence in the world? Is this a blip or has long term damage been done? Our State Department correspondent Barbara Plett Usher has been along for the journey. (Photo: US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson speaks in the Treaty Room of the US Department of State, 2017. Credit: Paul J. Richards/AFP)