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Up until the Second World War the United States was an isolationist country. It stayed out of the European-led  imperial carve-up to concentrate on developing its own contiguous empire. The country briefly emerged from its shell in World War, and then promptly pulled up the drawbridge, lowered the portcullis and retreated back into a continental shell protected by two ocean moats.

After World War Two, US involvement in world affairs was essential for holding off the Soviet Union and world stability. Then came Donald Trump. It was not clear at first whether the New York property mogul and his “America First” policy was an isolationist or unilateralist,  or a bit of both. Coronavirus has helped to answer the question.

But before that, it must be made clear that Donald Trump’s major concern is not America’s national interest or world stability. It is, quite simply, Donald Trump. At the moment that means winning a second White House tenancy agreement in November 2020.

That is why in the early days of coronavirus  he was keen to minimise the dangers. He had a “hunch” that it was going to be OK. People should continue going to work even if they had Covid-19 symptoms. Flu, said Trump, was more dangerous than Coronavirus. He claimed there were plenty of testing kits when his scientific experts said the opposite.

There was a purpose to these  irresponsibly dangerous and false statements:  to keep the stock market indices as high as possible.  Trump’s best chance of winning a second term is a continuation of the booming market that has marked his first three years.  Trump once famously said that if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue his supporters would still vote for him. Perhaps, but will they vote for Trump if their pensions are destroyed; meagre savings wiped out and jobs and homes lost?

The stock market analysts didn’t believe Trump. They believed the medical scientists. The market indices went through the floor, into the cellar and are now burrowing into the world’s economic foundations. Trump has been forced to change tack and sail in a completely opposite direction. But it is still a direction designed to achieve his political aims.

It is revealing that the three targets for travel suspension are also the two countries and one economic region with which the president has the most problems. China draws manufacturing away from America and threatens to overtake its economic dominance. Iran sponsors Middle East terrorism and is a danger to Israel and Saudi Arabia. The EU blocks American goods to the world’s largest trading zone.  Not included in Trump’s travel ban is the UK (with whom he is negotiating a post-Brexit trade deal); Japan with 627 coronavirus cases (as of 12 March) or South Korea with an estimated 8,000 cases of coronavirus.

America’s isolationism runs deep and it can be found most securely entrenched among the president’s parochially-minded support base. Foreign-borne health concerns have exaggerated the fears that are feeding the revival of this isolationism.  Trump is playing to those fears. At the same, coronavirus provide an opportunity for the president to advance on the foreign policy front. Trump is neither an isolationist or a unilateralist. He is an opportunist.

* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice. He also contributes to “The New World” magazine and lectures on world affairs. He is the author of “America Made in Britain,” two editions of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “The Falklands Crisis.”