I was walking on a beautiful beach in Venezuela after a challenging fieldwork trip to visit an Indigenous group living near the Colombian border. A young man approached with an angry expression on his face. He snarled, “Basura Americana” (American garbage) and then walked away.

I had no idea what experience had led him to show such contempt for someone from the United States. His disdain stood in stark contrast to the warm welcome my colleague and I had enjoyed from other Venezuelans. I knew that tourists from other countries would sometimes earn the appellation “ugly” for their culturally insensitive behavior, but this unprovoked verbal assault came as a complete surprise.

We had better get used to being treated with contempt by citizens of other countries. The positive reputation of America, earned by decades of foreign assistance and carefully cultivated alliances, is being destroyed in a matter of weeks under the Trump administration. They have threatened hostile takeovers of sovereign nations (Greenland, Panama, Canada), ended humanitarian programs that saved uncounted lives by eliminating the critical source of funding and expertise under the Agency for International Development, proposed ethnic cleansing for Gaza, sided with Russia over Ukraine and Europe, and promoted a Nazi-inspired far-right political party in Germany.

The list doesn’t include all the insults and lies directed at other allies, such as Mexico and South Africa.

Some may ask, “What does any of this matter to me? I don’t care what foreigners think of us and I rarely, if ever, travel outside the U.S.”

The Trump slogan “America First,” which is inherited from isolationists who opposed engagement in the 20th-century European wars, speaks powerfully to those with a narrow and uninformed worldview. The fact is that the core problems that directly affect us do not know any national borders and demand good foreign relations to address.

At the top of the list is global climate change. The ignorant denial of the human contributions to a warming earth will not deter the onslaught of ever more severe hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, extreme heat events, droughts and destructive wildfires. Only internationally coordinated shifts from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy will slow and diminish the worst impact of a super-heated planet.

Abandoning the Paris Accords, one of Donald Trump’s first acts, and promoting a “drill baby, drill” policy takes us in exactly the wrong direction. Burning diplomatic bridges that made those accords possible means we won’t be trusted if and when our leadership wakes up to the reality we face.

Another global challenge that can only be addressed with international cooperation is the rise of pandemics like COVID. Leaving the World Health Organization and putting a vaccine denier at the head of the Department of Health and Human Services puts us at a serious disadvantage when the next infectious disease arrives and spreads.

The current spike in measles cases in vaccine-denying communities in Texas is the canary in the coal mine for the future that lies ahead. Bird flu is next. Like climate change, diseases really don’t care that you don’t believe in effective prevention methods and international collaboration for vaccine development. You and your loved ones are at immediate risk of sickness and death.

Perhaps your primary interest is in your own economic status. The discredited use of tariffs to punish other nations is already raising prices for American consumers. The claim that the cost will be borne by the targeted countries is simply false, as well established by historical precedent. The destruction of the Consumer Protection Bureau, which returned millions to Americans who have been swindled by corrupt and greedy corporations, will no longer be there to protect us. Cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are on the table, despite Trump’s promise not to touch them.

You may approve of downsizing government, but when that means there are inadequate resources to help you recover from disasters; when eliminating personnel means cutting the services on which you personally depend (e.g., veterans health care, food safety surveillance, infrastructure projects, support for child care, maintenance of public parks, etc.) perhaps you would prefer reductions not be in the hands of the incompetent and unelected billionaire Elon Musk.

There is a reason for the constitutional separation of powers, according to which Congress, not the executive, is in control of our nation’s purse strings. You have greater influence on your elected representatives than on King Donald. Use it!

Donald Joralemon, emeritus professor at Smith College, lives in Conway.