(Bloomberg) -- World leaders woke up this week to Donald Trump’s improved chances of retaking the White House, and have kickstarted preparations for what many now see as his inevitable return to power.
For all the genuine worries about the upheaval a second Trump term might bring, leaders skeptical of the Republican candidate are looking for ways to mitigate any potential damage — and find opportunities to benefit. Bloomberg News reporting on the sentiment in capitals across the globe reveals concern that Biden is starting to diminish the U.S.’s standing in the world, and are looking for potential positives in Trump.
Most government officials say privately that Biden shouldn’t be running for the presidency, and all from the U.K. to Japan are now racing to build or reconstitute their networks within the Trump camp, knowing that he places a high importance on personal contacts. Many officials asked not to be named discussing sensitive diplomatic matters, saying the U.S. presidential election is a domestic concern for Americans alone.
Richard Grenell, the U.S. ambassador to Germany in the first Trump administration who is mooted as a possible secretary of state in a second term, said in an interview this week that the former president’s unpredictability is “a positive for us.” Still, in his regular meetings he advises government officials — particularly in Europe — to “relax.”
“You know exactly what a second term would be because you saw it in the first term. You know him,” Grenell said on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. “I don’t think there’s any surprises.”
Trump’s foreign-policy approach has changed little since his first term: In his acceptance speech Thursday for the Republican nomination, he said the U.S. has “become a dumping ground for the rest of the world” and “they’re not going to be getting away with it for long.” He took repeated shots at Biden, who is under intense pressure from his own party to step aside, with some reports suggesting that could happen within days.
Although a lot can change ahead of November’s election, U.S. friends and foes alike are getting ready for a more transactional presidency where deal-making takes precedence over ideology. While that means more volatility — fears that Trump will abandon Ukraine, undercut US alliances and slap a 60 per cent tariff on Chinese goods — it also brings a fresh possibility for negotiations that lead to diplomatic breakthroughs in those areas.
World leaders are already starting to think about what they can offer to Trump as part of any deal, whether it be more spending on defense, more investments from leading tech companies or more purchases of U.S. goods. Similar to his first term, Trump has focused his campaign on how the U.S. is getting ripped off by allies and top trading partners, focusing on the monetary costs rather than the principle of defending the likes of Ukraine and Taiwan from aggression by Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping.
“Trump considers himself a keen negotiator, so he often takes maximalist positions before engaging,” said Drew Thompson, a former Pentagon official and a senior fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore. “Smart governments around the world should actively evaluate their value proposition to the United States and how they can articulate that value to the next president, whoever that may be.”
Although Trump’s approach represents a shift from Biden, it’s welcomed in some parts of the world — particularly the wide range of emerging economies known as the Global South. While leading members such as Brazil or South Africa — members of the BRICS alliance along with China and Russia — are more in tune with Biden politically, they disagree with him over Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and see Trump’s stance on ending the war as a possible area of shared interest.
In Africa, many countries have been left disappointed by Biden’s term, either by policies that obliged nations to choose between the U.S. and Russia, or due to America’s steadfast support for Israel in its war against Hamas, two African officials said. Both have led to the U.S. damaging its standing around the world, they added, giving Russia an opportunity to unfurl security assistance, arms supplies and humanitarian support to African nations — opening market access and softening the blow from U.S. and European sanctions.
Trump’s potential return is being received by “a mixture of dread, resignation and ambivalence, with some hope for more substantive engagement,” said Hassan Khannenje, director of the HORN International Institute for Strategic Studies based in Nairobi, Kenya. “The Biden administration has been underwhelming in its focus on African issues,” he added, saying that provides “an opportunity for Trump to reset.”
It’s a different story for Europe, which is staring at possible additional U.S. trade tariffs, alienation over its climate change ambitions, and a weakening of the transatlantic relationship at a time when Russia is pursuing the most devastating conflict on the continent since World War II.
Trump is lukewarm on NATO, while his running mate, JD Vance, is openly opposed to aiding Ukraine and advocates a pivot to Asia. It’s a central concern that dominated a meeting of more than 40 European leaders hosted by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Thursday.
At the same time, there’s a recognition in Europe that all is not well with Biden. One senior French official favorable to Biden said the U.S. president hasn’t been doing well for a long time now, and people need to stop pretending that everything is fine with him. While U.S. allies respect Biden both as a leader and personally as an individual, the official said, he’s getting physically and politically weaker by the day, and that reality has dramatic consequences on the ground across the world.
Some officials in Europe are now looking into joint borrowing to ramp up defense spending. Whereas a sum of €100 billion in defense bonds was previously mentioned, some now say that two or three times that amount will be needed if Trump is in power.
While Europe frets at the prospect of Trump, some states in the Middle East win either way.
Saudi Arabia, a staunch Trump supporter during his first term, is enjoying its best relations yet with Biden and his administration, even if it took three years of difficulty to get to this point, according to a senior Saudi official. While Riyadh now faces having to pivot back to Trump’s worldview, that’s helped by mutual contacts with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the past six months, as outlined by Trump in a recent Bloomberg Businessweek interview.
The Saudis think they will be able to continue working with Trump on a U.S.-Saudi defense pact, probably without the element of establishing formal diplomatic ties with Israel, as both sides have seen what can be gained by strengthening ties, the official said. Trump wants to put limits on China’s role in the Mideast and that’s what the Saudi-U.S. deal would do. “They’re always going to need protection,” Trump said. “I’ll always protect them.”
So too in Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been invited to address the U.S. Congress in Washington next week. While Netanyahu has benefited from Biden’s backing for Israel’s war in Gaza, he has been working behind the scenes to improve his relationship with Trump, which deteriorated after the president lost to Biden at the 2020 election. (In an interview for the book Trump’s Peace published in 2023, Trump accused Netanyahu of disloyalty for accepting Biden’s win, saying “I haven’t spoken to him since. F**k him.”)
It looks like some of those efforts are paying off. On July 16, some 48 hours after the attempt on his life, Trump reposted on Truth Social a video message from Netanyahu in which the Israeli leader and his wife wished “President Trump a speedy recovery.”
Much of the rest of the world, though, may soon be facing indifference from an inward-looking US — or increased demands.
It’s a prospect that’s exercising officials in Taiwan, which currently enjoys bipartisan U.S. support in the face of Chinese pressure to unify with the mainland. While Trump started a trade war with China in his first term that benefited Taiwan, he also told Businessweek that the island should pay for US protection, prompting Premier Cho Jung-tai to stress the government’s progress on military spending and conscription.
The bigger question, however, may be the fallout if Trump facilitates a Putin victory in Ukraine.
Such a scenario “might also deepen the America skepticism among Taiwanese,” said Chen Fang-yu, assistant professor at the Department of Political Science at Soochow University.
In South Korea, the concerns over Trump’s reliability as an alliance partner has reignited a debate in Seoul over whether to obtain an atomic arsenal independent of the U.S. nuclear umbrella to deter North Korea. Similarly, local media reported that South Korea is seeking to speed negotiations with Washington over a pact to fund American troops to reach an agreement by the end of the year.
On the economic side, there’s a realization in Seoul that companies would have to promise new and bigger U.S. investments to satisfy a new Trump administration, a government official said — adding that wouldn’t be easy. South Korean companies are among myriad foreign firms that have invested billions of dollars as a result of Biden’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act, which provides incentives for boosting domestic manufacturing of things like electric vehicles and battery plants.
Japan, another key ally in Asia, isn’t as worried. Taro Aso, a former deputy premier, visited Trump in April in a bid to rebuild top-level contact similar to what late leader Shinzo Abe managed through his golf diplomacy.
For Ichiro Fujisaki, a former Japanese ambassador to the U.S., there’s no cause for concern because Trump is a known entity, and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida “has been doing a lot in the direction Trump likes,” raising defense spending and buying Tomahawk cruise missiles. Trump’s call for dollar devaluation to spur U.S. manufacturing competitiveness could be a boon for Japan, providing much-needed relief to Tokyo with the yen at historic lows against the greenback.
Closer to the U.S., Trump’s potential comeback is seen as carrying both risks and benefits for Mexico. Migration and a review of the North American free trade agreement known as USMCA — as well as the stampede of companies into Mexico to take advantage of the proximity to U.S. consumers — are all potential flashpoints.
Mexico’s President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, who takes office in October, has prepared with some strategic cabinet picks. In Marcelo Ebrard as economy chief, she has a former foreign affairs minister with good connections in Washington that will be deployed when he represents Mexico in the USMCA review in 2026. Juan Ramon de la Fuente, a prior Mexican ambassador to the United Nations, is her foreign affairs minister.
It looks more straightforward for Argentina’s self-styled wildman president, Javier Milei, a natural Trump ally who made no secret of his admiration for the U.S. billionaire and his politics.
Milei expects to sign a deal for fresh funds from the International Monetary Fund before the U.S. election, but if that doesn’t happen he believes Trump would speed up an IMF agreement, according to a government official with direct knowledge of Milei’s thinking.
Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is concerned that Trump’s return would provide a boost to the far-right movement led by former President Jair Bolsonaro, whose supporters staged an insurrection attempt in Brasilia mirroring the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. That’s fueled Lula’s worries that a Trump victory would pose a threat to democracy not just in the U.S. but across the world, according to three people familiar with his thinking.
At the same time, his government sees little potential outcome on economic, trade or political ties: The U.S.-Brazil relationship has survived sharp political differences throughout its 200-year history. It’s even possible Brazil could find common ground with Trump on some geopolitical issues, including Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Among the greatest concerns voiced worldwide is less Trump’s bombast than his unpredictability, a facet which makes him hard to deal with — which, according to Grenell, is exactly the point.
“If Trump wins, we don’t know what he will do,” Lula said recently. “Honestly, we have no idea.”
With assistance from Ben Westcott, Yian Lee, Soo-Hyang Choi, Yoshiaki Nohara, Alastair Gale, Rebecca Choong Wilkins, Alberto Nardelli, Alex Wickham, Ellen Milligan, Samy Adghirni, Simone Iglesias, Simon Marks, Katarina Höije, Ethan Bronner, Matthew Martin, Nick Wadhams, Manuela Tobias, Alex Vasquez, Maya Averbuch and S’thembile Cele
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