Friday marked National Tradie Day, an occasion to raise a Bunnings snag to the vital role that Australia’s tradespeople play in building and maintaining the places we all live, work, and play.

Those of us with a penchant for DIY misadventure know that’s no mean feat.

But just as the Razzies are to the Oscars, it is also an apt moment to reflect – yin and yang-like – on dodgy tradies.

These dubious characters famed for their unreliability and extortive practices, for whom poor work is either the fault of their tools (never mind if they’re used improperly and not maintained) or someone else.

On that count, it’s hard to argue 2025’s worst tradie gong shouldn’t go to Donald Trump. We know he likes awards.

Successive US administrations have developed and augmented America’s tools of statecraft to the point where it became a unipolar hegemon.

While that moment has passed, it remains the world’s most powerful country and the American presidency the most powerful office (increasingly so as unitary executive theory becomes embedded in practice).

So what has Trump’s approach been since again taking charge of the most formidable toolkit the world has ever known? In short, to misuse, abuse and ruin its contents.

Some gear he’s fully thrown into the skip bin.

USAID was never perfect – what development program is – but it saved tens of millions of lives in the six decades it existed. That it was established by President Kennedy at the height of the Cold War is no coincidence – the agency was intended to advance American soft power and counter Soviet influence.

With the shuttering of USAID, and with it initiatives like Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, the erosion of US soft power is plain to see.

Also explicitly underpinning the establishment of USAID was the idea that America’s own prosperity and security was intrinsically linked to that of other countries.

Just as painting over a moisture damaged ceiling won’t fix the leak in the apartment above, addressing the root causes of instability and conflict in situ is much cheaper than waiting for the symptoms to present at your own border.

In this sense development is preventative security. So aside from the awful human toll, not only is the callous dismantling of USAID a soft power own goal; its doing under the pretence of cost-cutting is a false economy that will come back to bite.

While he hasn’t yet wrecked America’s defence tools, the President’s technique is clearly blunting them.

In 2024 the US spent just shy of one trillion dollars on its military – triple what China spent – more than the next nine countries combined and accounting for 37 per cent of all defence expenditure globally.

Yet US defence capability cannot be measured in dollars alone – its network of alliances in Europe and Asia are key strategic assets with basing agreements, intelligence-sharing and joint exercises all significant force multipliers.

Trump’s derisive treatment of alliances – akin to an apprentice hazing – betrays a fundamentally misguided view of them as burdens.

Taken together with his tariff paroxysms, the President’s signalling of US unreliability is already weakening alliances, and by extension US security.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said in February that his “absolute priority” is to “achieve independence from the USA”.

Unsettled allies the world over are pondering alternatives ranging from diversification to acquiring nuclear weapons. A good site manager would understand that an atmosphere of consternation and aggrievement is hardly a blueprint for success.

Moreover, the ways in which Trump is deploying the military in support of domestic political agendas and firing those who contradict him – as well as his stacking of the US intelligence community with loyalists – all pose clear politicisation risks.

A politicised security apparatus might appeal to a wannabe monarch, but the distorted priorities and compromised decision-making it engenders are clearly antithetical to sound statecraft.

Another tool that is being run into the ground is US diplomacy. As with other government departments, Trump’s approach has been to follow the Project 2025 playbook by instituting large scale layoffs and stacking senior State Department roles traditionally held by career diplomats with political appointees.

And while it might satiate Trump’s appetite for culture wars, his withdrawal of the US from key multilateral agreements and institutions – including the Paris Agreement, World Health Organisation and United Nations Human Rights Council – likewise diminishes America’s reliability, credibility and influence. In other words, the currency of international relations.

It also dilutes their efficacy at a time when global crises are converging and multilateral solutions have never been more needed. This is to the detriment of everyone – the US included.

The tools that a state has at its disposal are critical – they comprise the means for interacting with and shaping the world around it. But who wields them and how they use them is equally as important.

If discarded, misused or left to rust, off-the-shelf replacements aren’t readily available.

As the contest for geopolitical influence intensifies, America’s competitors don’t need the yellow pages – Trump’s inept statecraft is publicity enough.

Tom Barber is Program Manager at the Asia-Pacific Development, Diplomacy and Defence Dialogue (AP4D)