A swift end to wars in Ukraine and Gaza. A hard reset with China. The threat of punitive tariffs against the US’s top trading partners. Unflinching reassessments of key security alliances.
President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House promises to be one of the most unpredictable and potentially disruptive presidential terms of the modern era.
Transactional by design, Trump’s “America first” outlook is expected to once again judge allies by their defence spending and trade balance with the US, while throwing out established views of adversaries.
Ukraine
‘If I win, as president-elect, I’ll have a deal made, guaranteed’
— DONALD TRUMP, September 2024
Trump has claimed that if he wins, he will end the war between Russia and Ukraine before his inauguration in January. In a September interview, he declined to share further details.
“If I give you those plans, I’m not going to be able to use them, they’ll be very unsuccessful. You know, part of it’s a surprise, right?” he said.
Trump’s running mate JD Vance has suggested that a Trump administration would aim for Russia and Ukraine to freeze the fighting along the existing front lines, with the line of demarcation becoming “heavily fortified so Russia doesn’t invade again”.
Such a deal would be deeply unpopular among Ukrainian leaders. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly rejected making territorial concessions. But officials in Kyiv fear Trump would cease all military aid, forcing them to capitulate on Moscow’s terms.
Vance said the plan would give Russia a guarantee of neutrality from Kyiv, which would not join Nato. Ukraine would retain its independence, with Germany and other European countries contributing to its reconstruction.
Europe
‘You don’t pay your bills, you get no protection. It’s very simple’
— DONALD TRUMP, February 2024
Trump will expect Nato member countries to meet or exceed their defence spending target of 2 per cent of GDP, something he repeatedly called for on the campaign trail, while also appearing to confuse the target with payments made directly to the defence alliance.
At a campaign event in February, he added: “One of the presidents of a big country stood up [and] said, ‘Well, sir, if we don’t pay and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?’
“I said, ‘You didn’t pay, you’re delinquent’,” Trump said. “No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want.”
Analysts expect Trump to rethink the US presence in Europe more widely.
Victoria Coates, a former senior official on Trump’s National Security Council who is now at the Heritage Foundation think-tank, said it was “100 per cent correct” to believe a second Trump presidency would end the era in which the US was seen as the guarantor of the western world’s security.
Coates said she tells Europeans: “How about you do what you said you were going to do 10 years ago and spend 2 per cent of GDP for defence? And actually it should be three.”
The Middle East
‘I did encourage [Netanyahu] to get this over with’
— DONALD TRUMP, august 2024
Trump is expected to shift away from the Biden administration’s approach to Israel’s wars with Hamas in Gaza, and with Hizbollah in Lebanon.
Former aides said he would be more supportive of Israeli military campaigns, and would be unlikely to use US military assistance as leverage to affect the actions of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Trump has told Netanyahu he wants a swift end to the war, but also that the Israeli leader should “do what you have to do” to defeat Hamas and Hizbollah.
Once in office, Trump is expected to focus on confronting Iran and normalising relations between Israel and other Gulf Arab nations, expanding the so-called Abraham Accords that began in his last term.
In his first term, Trump pulled the US out of the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran and instituted a campaign of “maximum pressure”, with harsh sanctions aiming to push Iran to agree to a more comprehensive accord on ending both its nuclear programme and destabilising actions through its regional proxies.
Since then Iran has resumed enriching the uranium needed to develop nuclear weapons.
Trump said in September that he would be open to negotiating with Iran on its nuclear programme.
Mark Dubowitz, chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think-tank in Washington, said Trump’s unpredictability meant a second presidency was a foreign policy gamble.
“He could go back to maximum pressure, double down on it and provide significant support to the Iranian people and . . . do everything we possibly can to bring the Iranian regime down,” he said.
Or, Dubowitz added, Trump could look to negotiate with Iran early in his term and reach a deal that puts fewer checks on Iran’s nuclear programme. “Republicans, of course, politically, [would] have no choice but to line up in support of that deal,” Dubowitz said.
China
‘I would say: “If you go into Taiwan . . . I’m going to tax you at 150% to 200%”’
— DONALD TRUMP, October 2024
Trump has called Chinese President Xi Jinping “a very good friend of mine during my term” while also threatening high tariffs as a tool to urge Beijing to heed American pressure.
Trump said last month he would convince China not to invade Taiwan by telling Xi Jinping he would impose tariffs as high as 200 per cent, or would shut down trade altogether.
Asked whether he would use military force against a Chinese blockade on Taiwan, Trump responded: “I wouldn’t have to because he [Xi] respects me and knows I’m . . . crazy.”
Republican representative Mike Waltz said Trump would face congressional pressure to impose sanctions on China to prevent Beijing from buying Russian oil, a line of trade that has drawn the powers closer and helped Moscow to continue its war in Ukraine.
“President Trump . . . in his own language, said, ‘Hey, China, if you keep buying from them, you can’t buy from us . . . So there’s a number of things we can do,” Waltz said in a radio interview on Monday.