The global response to Donald Trump’s imminent return to power has been nothing short of remarkable.
From Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu hinting at a potential Lebanon cease-fire as a "gift" to the president-elect, to Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky saying the war will “end faster” under the incoming administration, to European and Asian leaders expressing Stockholm syndrome-levels of excitement to work with him, foreign leaders have been lining up to kiss the president-elect’s ring since his election victory two weeks ago.
To be sure, most US allies and adversaries still dislike and mistrust Trump. But with memories of the clashes, chaos, and unpredictability of his first term still fresh, they know that they get crosswise with Trump at their own peril. The president-elect still believes America is being taken for a ride, values are something other countries use to constrain US power, and allies are only as good as the money they spend on US goods and protection. And Trump is willing to flex Washington’s full military and economic muscle – whether in the form of high tariffs or the withdrawal of US security support – to extract gains from other nations.
World leaders are accordingly doing everything they can to avoid becoming a target of his wrath, using flattery and favor to appeal to Trump’s ego and transactional nature in the hopes of getting in his good graces. After all, they know Trump is nothing if not willing to sit down with anyone – whether a longstanding democratic ally or a brutal dictator – to try to cut a deal that makes him look good at home.
The upshot is that at least in the early days of his presidency, Donald Trump is poised to rack up far more foreign policy wins than many people appreciate. Not because he’s a “stable genius” or a particularly gifted negotiator, but because he’ll be running the world’s largest economy and most powerful military, with leverage over virtually every country and less aversion to wielding it than any US president that came before him.
But that’s table stakes for Trump. There are three reasons why his ability to get concessions from other countries and put points on the board early on will be greater than during his first term.
First, Trump is no longer isolated, with a growing number of world leaders eager to welcome him to the international arena. Eight years ago, the president-elect was an outlier, with few true friends on the global stage apart from Netanyahu, Gulf leaders, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Japan’s Shinzo Abe, India’s Narendra Modi, and a handful of others. But things have changed since.
Italy's Giorgia Meloni, currently the most popular G7 leader, shares Trump's views on immigration, social policy, and economic nationalism. Argentina’s Javier Milei, the chainsaw-wielding “Trump of the Pampas,” was the first foreign leader to meet with him after the election. In Canada, the Conservative Party's Pierre Poilievre is poised to replace Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, promising a much more Trump-aligned relationship. Germany’s Olaf Scholz will likewise soon be replaced, probably by the opposition conservative Christian Democrat leader Friedrich Merz, a wealthy former businessman who is ideologically closer to the incoming American president. South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol is strategically positioning himself to become the new Shinzo Abe, going as far as taking up golf again to establish a closer relationship with Trump. The list goes on.
Trump is no more a fan of multilateralism than he was eight years ago. He remains mistrustful of alliances and indifferent to other countries’ values and political systems. But whenever he attends gatherings of the G7, G20, and NATO now, the president-elect will at least be surrounded by like-minded leaders who will be much more receptive to his “America First” agenda and inclined to play by his rules.
Second, the world is much more dangerous than it was in 2017, raising the stakes of misalignment with Trump. Major wars raging in Europe and the Middle East, heightened US-China tensions, and a more fragile global economy make the costs of being on the wrong side of the president-elect exponentially higher than they were during Trump’s first term.
And third, Trump’s domestic political power is significantly more consolidated this time around. The president-elect has unified control of Congress and a pliant Republican Party, knows his way around Washington, DC, and is surrounding himself with far more ideologically aligned loyalists than in his first term. Gone are the institutionalist career staffers and establishment Republicans who often checked Trump’s most disruptive impulses. For world leaders, this means alternative backchannels to get around the president-elect’s foreign policy preferences won’t be nearly as available or effective. Whether or not they like it, it’s Trump’s way or the highway now.
It’s no wonder that we’re seeing so many countries preemptively bend the knee, desperate to find common ground with Trump before he takes office. China, for instance, is floating potential concessions to avert an economically destabilizing trade war, from organizing a Ukraine peace conference to buying US Treasuries and increasing purchases of American goods. Iran granted a meeting to Trump advisor-extraordinaire Elon Musk in an apparent effort to facilitate a de-escalatory deal. Taiwan’s leadership is planning a massive new American arms purchase offer to show Trump they’re serious about paying more for US protection. Meanwhile, Ukraine is not only expressing readiness to negotiate a cease-fire but is also weighing several sweeteners – including potential business deals, access to the country’s natural resources, and Ukrainian troop deployments to replace US forces in Europe after the war – to convince Trump that continued US support is in his personal and political interests.
None of this means that every effort to appease Trump will succeed, or that Trump’s mere presence in the White House will end every war, de-escalate every conflict, and resolve every disagreement. If history is any guide, most attempts to strike a lasting deal with the president-elect will fail. In the long run, his approach will erode America’s influence on the global stage, deepen the G-Zero vacuum of leadership, and make the world a more dangerous place.
In the near term, however, Trump’s penchant for bilateral deal-making, disregard for longstanding American norms and values, reputation for unpredictability, and unrestrained leadership of the world’s sole superpower will increase the odds of improbable breakthroughs.
Welcome to Trump’s international honeymoon – it may not last long, but at least nobody’s having any fun.