Buckle up because this could get bumpy. The bloody nose American voters delivered to US president Donald Trump may provoke a volatile response from the White House abroad.
Facing probable deadlock for his domestic agenda, European governments will be nervously waiting to see whether the electoral setback pushes Trump to lash out against them instead.
Senior officials in the European Commission have been privately cautioning colleagues for weeks that big Republican losses in the midterms, while clipping Trump’s room to manoeuvre in Washington, could leave the US president bruised and angling for a fight elsewhere.
That might manifest itself in the war in Iran, affect the already waning US support for Ukraine, or see the US president wade into a fresh row with the European Union.
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The “blue wave” that saw the Democrats retake control of Congress will hamstring the Trump administration’s ability to pass legislation, but the US president will still enjoy latitude on foreign policy.
In the final weeks of the campaign, Trump sought to blame Ukraine’s strikes on Russian oil refineries for energy prices that have soared since his war in Iran blocked the Strait of Hormuz.
Relations between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy have plunged to a fresh low. That’s a problem because Ukraine relies on US military intelligence to select Russian battlefield targets and its supply of Patriot air defence interceptor missiles (paid for by European allies). That gives Trump leverage to turn the screw on Zelenskiy in peace negotiations involving Moscow.
European leaders and Commission president Ursula von der Leyen spent a lot of political capital taking the heat out of the trade row last year. Trump’s tariffs on trading partners looked as though they could drag the EU into a hugely damaging trade war.
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Brussels negotiated a one-sided deal, accepting a 15 per cent tariff rate on EU goods sold into the US to “stabilise” the relationship. It has been quiet on that front since then. Setbacks in court have forced the Trump administration to think up increasingly creative legal grounds to underpin the import taxes.
Trump’s tariff agenda and the energy crisis undoubtedly drove up the cost of living, an issue which featured prominently in many midterm races. That could prove to be a restraining force that keeps a frustrated Trump from reaching for his favourite tariff cudgel.
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Spain’s left-wing prime minister Pedro Sánchez, a vocal critic of Trump, said US voters had turned away from the politics of hate, machismo and “policies that only make people poorer”.
We’re unlikely to hear many other European leaders have a say. Everyone is keeping their head down and taking a guess at what these results will mean for the second half of Trump 2.
How we’re covering the US midterms
