COMMENT

Trump and the world: Mapping reaction a fortnight after election win

Donald Trump’s global impact is divisive, with world leaders expressing mixed reactions. Europe grapples with populist surges; Russia sees opportunity; Ukraine fears abandonment; China anticipates trade clashes, while India remains cautiously optimistic.

Rashmee Roshan Lall

Nov 27, 2024 — 5 min read

Credit: Flickr/Gage Skidmore

W ithin 48 hours of the US election, President-elect Donald Trump told NBC that he had spoken to “probably” 70 world leaders. That number has risen in the fortnight since.

But one thing hasn’t changed. Pundits, players and ordinary people around the world remain divided between admiration and aggravation over Mr Trump’s victory.

It’s worth going round the map and looking more closely at what’s been said or done:

Europe

The mood is competitive with former Belgian PM Guy Verhofstadt tweeting after Mr Trump’s election victory: “There is only one good response to the outcome of the American elections … MEGA … Make Europe Great Again”.

Nationalists like Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Eurosceptics have been cheering. Everyone else is being as diplomatic as possible, albeit through gritted teeth and with such transparent guile that it all seems rather silly. France’s President Emmanuel Macron, for instance, tweeted in English that he wanted to “work together” with Mr Trump but said in his French-language tweet that there must be a stronger, more united Europe.

In an earlier time, we might have asked: Does Mr Macron’s office really think the Trump folks can’t speak French. In 2024, the right question is as follows: Do the Macron people really think the Trump people don’t have Google Translate?

Aside from that, it’s worth noting Mr Macron’s remarks to fellow European leaders in Budapest on November 7: “The world is made up of herbivores and carnivores. If we decide to remain herbivores, then the carnivores will win, and we will be a market for them.” He finished as follows: “I think, at the very least, we should choose to become omnivores.”

It’s a fact that Mr Trump’s victory will embolden rightwing European populists such as Mr Orbán, Slovakia’s Robert Fico, and Serbia’s Aleksandar Vučić. They could, as one analyst has written, “form a sort of illiberal internationale”.

Russia

In the immediate aftermath of Mr Trump’s victory, Moscow was manifestly pleased. President Vladimir Putin and various functionaries within the administration, legislature, think tanks, and universities said as much in different ways. On November 9, Mr Putin received an early Christmas present from the incoming US administration when a senior adviser to the president-elect said the focus would be on achieving “peace and to stop the killing” in Ukraine rather than enabling it to get back to Russian-occupied Crimea, territory that was annexed a decade ago.

That said, the situation has changed a bit from that point. The current US president, Joe Biden, has allowed Ukraine to use a powerful American long-range weapon for limited strikes into Russian territory. It’s part of an attempt to allow Ukraine to get in a stronger position for any negotiation with Russia to end the war that Mr Trump is minded to oversee come January 20.

But for all that Mr Trump may be interested in ending the Ukraine war “in a day”, as he has said, the US president-elect is nothing if not unpredictable. He would probably not be willing to do any deal with Mr Putin if it made America look weak. As UK foreign secretary David Lammy has astutely noted, Mr Trump won’t want to leave Mr Putin “emboldened” as he seeks to end the war in Ukraine.

Ukraine

Is worried and rightly so. Four months short of the third anniversary of the Russian invasion, Europe’s appetite is waning for the grinding, slow-motion endurance test in which Ukraine is engaged. The US has been the biggest donor of military aid to Ukraine since the war began (providing roughly 43 per cent of the total) and Germany, the next biggest donor, comes in really far behind at 12 per cent. Even though France and Germany’s defence ministers have said that Europe will “fill this gap to be more credible in terms of deterrence”, and the European Union announced a $39 billion loan for Ukraine in September, it’s not clear if this will be a recurring payment.

All that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky can hope is that Mr Trump’s America does not allow a Carthaginian peace, i.e. the sort of brutal cessation of war imposed by the Romans on Carthage so that it would never recover. After all, Mr Trump may not be minded to be generous to Mr Zelensky because he was reluctant to dig for dirt on Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, five years ago. Also, Mr Zelenskyy did tell The Guardian in June, with more perspicacity than prudence that if Mr Trump imposed a bad peace deal on Ukraine, he would risk being a “loser president”.

China

President Xi Jinping has noted Mr Trump’s inconsistent statements about Taiwan. Mr Trump does not say ‘yay’ or ‘nay’ to whether he would use American forces to defend the island. But he has said Taiwan should pay for American protection and has complained that its semiconductor industry “took all of our chip business”. China is also preparing for a trade war if the US president wants to have a go, though it can ill-afford the 60 per cent levy that Mr Trump threatens to impose on Chinese goods.

Mr Xi’s China will be glad to cast Mr Trump’s America as a selfish bully for reneging on the solidarity and commitment of multilateral organisations and America First-ism in general. But China would also rather have a partner in the climate change transition to a decarbonised economy, something that Mr Trump, a climate denialist, would never be.

North Korea

Kim Jong Un may recall those thousands of men currently fighting Ukraine for Russia. After multiple summits and an epistolary exchange, Mr Kim could be said to know Mr Trump rather well. He may know that Mr Trump won’t mind him building nukes and missiles to keep South Korea and Japan in line, but any real aggression and he’ll be in real trouble.

India

May be less troubled than other big Asian countries. While Mr Trump has complained India is a “very big abuser” of tariffs, the bilateral trade surplus is not big enough to substantially matter. The US, even Trump’s America, will probably continue to see India as a handy counterweight to China. That said, India may be affected by the new Trump administration’s stance on migration because even legal movement (on H1-B visas for high-skilled workers) could stop Indians from heading over to the US. That’s what happened in 2020.