By Jeremy Kinsman

April 25, 2025

It is difficult to capture this moment in Europe’s reaction to the extraordinary storm Donald Trump has launched across multiple fronts. The winds, swells, and tides change almost from hour to hour. Writing from the UK, there is little else preoccupying policy and political minds, to say nothing of the talk in the Waitrose checkout line.

In Canada, voters are having similar conversations, only with greater urgency ahead of an election Monday that will determine our fate based on a bilateral dynamic with America suddenly soured by one volatile actor.

In a matter of weeks, Trump has done his worst to upend US relations with the rest of the world, especially with allies, initially over international security roles, and then with his weaponization of tariffs and trade. He has been particularly hostile toward erstwhile longstanding allies, including Canada and the European Union (which he wildly asserted was “created just to screw America”).

At this writing, Trump has just doubled down on his threats to annex Canada in a TIME magazine interview on his first 100 days in office, confirming that his talk of making the country the 51st US state is not trolling.

Seemingly impulsive, aggressively indifferent to facts, acting on a rationale of instinct and apparently addicted to anything that allows this norm-breaking performance to monopolize the spotlight, he articulates few coherent plans but disrupts, in some cases, to “see what will happen.” In this second term, Trump is untethered by the few cautionary advisors who, in his first term, moderated his behaviour. He chose his new team for blind loyalty, not competence, or fact-based advice.

Trump has shocked Europeans and other allies of Ukraine first by recycling Russian talking points, essentially trashing three years of democratic solidarity with the invaded country, as well as abandoning America’s defense of the principle of non-aggression. Gone is US commitment to universal values, morality and international law. Trump, in a perverse distortion of Realpolitik, told President Volodymyr Zelensky, “You don’t start a war against somebody that’s 20 times your size and then hope that people give you some missiles.”

Trump’s presumption to be the sole arbiter and mediator seems linked to extracting mineral resources from any outcome. But Trump and his gaffe-prone team of amateurs most badly want “a big win” for world peace to crown his first 100 days (ending April 30th) even if it comes at the expense of the Ukrainian people. The US administration is derisively cutting off British, French, Germans, Poles and other more committed allies of Ukraine — and indeed President Zelensky — from the process.

Allied concerns over Ukraine outcomes have been generally superseded by unprecedented worries over trade and economic stability. The calculation of Trump’s unilateral tariffs announced April 2, made no coherent sense except as a threat of economic devastation to trading partners if they do not conform to US demands.

Among allies and partners, Trump’s aggressiveness, disregard for facts, and unpredictability have triggered a gamut of reactions over the course of weeks of topsy-turvy declarations from the White House. They have gone from initial disbelief and near-panic, to fatalistic acceptance that — even more so than in the case of the first Trump presidency — we can no longer rely on established rule-based behaviour from this rogue administration.

Some partners — the UK, for example — feel especially exposed, and try obsequiously to please Trump. But as evidence piles up that the Trump administration’s actions are not politically sustainable, most ex-partners are waiting the process out, letting the markets do the dissuasive talking. They are assembling resistance plans, while pragmatically trying to retain a modicum of order in their relationships with the US. It is largely a question of “wait and see,” hoping for better, but preparing for worse.

Trump’s deferral of tariffs for 90 days as world markets shed trillions of dollars of value in the biggest monthly sell-offs on the NYSE since April,1930, came as a respite, not a relief.

The fierce pushback from equity markets and the global financial community has indeed caused Trump to re-cast and even reverse some decisions, though he would describe his pullbacks as pragmatic flexibility by a brilliant strategist.

The view from the US business community is turning dark. US business intially welcomed the prospect of Trump tax cuts and deregulation. But now, confidence in his leadership is dropping fast. This week, he seemed to reverse course, startled by brave CEOs and truth-telling markets. On Monday, the CEOs of the biggest US retailers (Walmart, Home Depot, and Target) told Trump bluntly that his “tariff and trade policies could disrupt supply chains, raise prices, and empty shelves.”

Axios reported that, during the meeting,”Trump seemed persuadable that his initial plan was too dangerous and disruptive.” It may explain why he backed off his attack on Fed chair Jerome Powell, which also pacified market turbulence.

Among allies and partners, Trump’s aggressiveness, disregard for facts, and unpredictability have triggered a gamut of reactions over the course of weeks of topsy-turvy declarations from the White House.

It is impossible to predict how this chapter of American influence will end, but most partners and allies seem to accept that the US has definitively abandoned the predictable interdependent postwar order in trade and security for some sort of “spheres of influence” design from the 19th century. Historian Yuval Noah Hariri judges that a US “vision of the world as a mosaic of fortresses’ has replaced the “liberal vision of the world as a co-operative network.”

If so, it may well be Fortress China that will emerge as most enhanced.

Trump’s declaration of especially fierce tariffs on China, and China’s robust counter-tariffs, sent markets reeling in fear of  a global trade war. Trump warned trading partners of US sanctions if they intensified trade with China.

Trump loves to describe “weaker” countries as “not having the cards.” But on this, China has the better cards, being the principal trading partner of twice as many countries as the US. Europeans, for example, see potentially a better fit in partnering with China in dynamic future growth sectors such as AI and green energy, than with a more backward-looking US. Trump seems obsessed with reversing the trend that took US manufacturing from 35% of the US economy in the 60s, to about 9% today. Trump’s nostalgic determination to bring factories back to the US wins 80% of superficial public approval as a catchy slogan, but not if they calculate the increased costs to American consumers. Polls show that only 25% actually want to work in a factory. Comedian Dave Chappelle quipped for millions when he said, “I want to wear Nikes, not make them.”

In yet another agenda obfuscating flip-flop, Trump says he now wants to cut a US-China comprehensive trade deal to tame the evolving tumult. Wary China is waiting to see.

Through these chaotic episodes on security and trade, at least the essential centrality and reliability of the global financial ecosystem seemed intact. Despite questions about its dominance, the US dollar remained its central pillar, accounting for 57% of global reserves, 54% of all export invoices in booming world trade, and 88% of foreign exchange transactions.

Trump actually wants a weaker US dollar to make US exports cheaper abroad, and to promote more foreign direct investment in the US to displace imports.Trump chaos has indeed educed the appeal of US equities and bonds to international buyers increasingly concerned by the combination of aberrant US behaviour and US net debt, now equal to 100% of GDP. The annual US budget deficit is reaching 7% of GDP. There is a big danger that depletion of confidence in the US dollar will contribute a loss of US influence overall and sap confidence in America itself.

The European press reports daily on Trump’s vengeful efforts to reduce the independence and even vocations of universities, the free press, the autonomous judiciary, and other present and potential opponents. Most commentary predicts that Trump will hit a wall of popular pushback.

The latest Economist/YouGov poll shows that in the last month “Americans are quickly souring on Donald Trump’s handling of his job as president – 54% strongly or somewhat disapprove and 41% approve. As recently as one month ago, more Americans approved than disapproved.” It is the worst showing of any President at this early stage of their presidency.

Europeans recognize that US isolationism goes back to George Washington’s cautionary advice in his farewell address to avoid “foreign entanglements.” In 1940, 80% of the US public objected to America joining the war against Germany before the attack on Pearl Harbor propelled US power decisively into what was in effect a war for democracy.

Enlightened US leadership of the postwar recovery, including the establishment of multilateral institutions to create a world safe from arbitrary aggression, reinforced via the incentive of collective prosperity through free trade, seemed to set a new consensual US values norm. Shared transatlantically, and then, increasingly, globally, the Cold War outcome and subsequent decades seemed to broaden and confirm it.

Since 2000, events—from the protracted Iraq and Afghanistan wars to the Wall Street-catalyzed financial cataclysm to the two Trump presidencies — have undermined that buoyant post-Cold War optimism, compromising American leadership and contributing the deterioration in relations we now observe.

The Eurasia Group’s Ian Bremmer calls the current reality a G-0 world. If Xi Jinping wants it, it might become a G-2 world, followed by a whole new G-1 world. Meanwhile, the notion of a US-led G-7 is clearly kaput.

Trump has provided Canada and democracies in Europe with a wake-up call about their own future. They envisage like-minded consortia to concert and strengthen ties among themselves, to deepen cooperation — in world security, trade, and financial affairs – with the US, or without.

Mark Carney has received vivid and positive coverage in Europe for Canada’s exemplary defiance of our neighbour’s presumptive threats and designs. It encourages a great Canadian opportunity to build out our relationships from the current vulnerability of over-dependence.

Policy Contributing Writer Jeremy Kinsman was Canada’s ambassador to Russia, high commissioner to the UK, ambassador to Italy and ambassador to the European Union. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the Canadian International Council.