Talking to participants at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, I found the reaction to Donald Trump’s second term more varied and less panicked than it was for his first term. Most are anxious, but leaders from many countries think they can make deals with him. Others believe his bark is worse than his bite.

All the people I spoke with, however, are puzzled by one core aspect of Trump’s worldview: that the United States is a patsy. “We will not allow ourselves to be taken advantage of any longer,” Trump declared in his inaugural address. Newly minted Secretary of State Marco Rubio, doing his best to imitate Trump in his confirmation hearings, complained that the United States has in recent decades too often prioritized “the global order” over its national interests.

This picture of America strikes the rest of the world as bizarre, almost upside down. After all, the United States has routinely used military force in pursuit of its national interests, unrestrained by global opinion. It invaded Iraq over the objections of other U.N. Security Council members and protests involving millions across the world. It has sanctioned countries unilaterally — from Iran to Cuba to Venezuela — even when its closest allies disagreed. Since 2009, it has imposed the most protectionist measures of any country — nearly 11,000, with China next at just less than 8,000.

As one foreign leader, who did not wish to be named, told me >> “We all accommodate American requests and wishes far more than those from any other country.”

It is true, however, that while always protecting its own national prerogatives and freedom of action, the United States has also tried to help build a better world. Before the country fully entered the international arena in World War II, great-power wars, nationalism and protectionism were all familiar features of international life. There was little global cooperation and much less financial help from rich nations to poorer ones. After 1945, the world built an open economy that has lifted billions out of poverty and disease. International institutions have tried to tackle common problems. Great-power wars have faded into the history books.

The United States has been key to this transformation. After World War II, far from asking for tribute from the defeated powers, it gave them money to rebuild. It opened its economy to the world, trying to create a world in which everyone could thrive and in which peace was more profitable than war. Its vision succeeded — and no country has benefited more than the United States. Eighty years after the end of World War II, America remains the world’s leading economic, technological, military and political power. In fact, in recent decades, the gap between America and many other rich countries (Germany, Japan) has actually increased. With about 4% of the world’s population, the United States today accounts for more than one-quarter of global gross domestic product, roughly the same proportion as during Ronald Reagan’s presidency four decades ago. Many technologies of the future are ones that America leads in and might well dominate.

But that is not enough for Trump. He wants to squeeze every foreigner for more. In 2017, during a meeting with the president of Panama, Trump complained that Panama charged the U.S. Navy too much. The amount Panama charged them to pass through the canal at the time was about $1 million a year, which comes out to less than 0.0002% of that year’s Pentagon budget. But Trump wanted to shake down a poorer Central American country and get a discount. It is a way of being that is always about a transaction rather than a relationship.

It’s quite possible that Trump will succeed in getting these discounts as he threatens other countries — most of them friends, allies and partners. But in doing so, he will lose the goodwill generated over decades of U.S. foreign policy, which made so many countries around the world want to ally with Washington against Russia or China. And he might unleash forces of nationalism and protectionism that over time will damage, even destroy, the world that America created — a world that has been more stable, peaceful, prosperous and free than any we have known before.

Email: fareed.zakaria.gps@turner.com.