07 Nov Back to the Future: What Comes Next in Trump 2.0

The dust has settled on the American election and the abundantly clear point has been made: Trump is back.

Unpredictability and volatility are the main sureties now, as Trump takes over the helm as Commander in Chief and leader of the Free World. For many governments and countries around the world, this will have clear and acute consequences, as many scramble to figure out messaging and try to appease the new chief of the world’s police force.

I spent the entirety of President Trump’s first term working for the US State Department at the US Embassy in London. During that time, it became clear that President Trump has clear views about very specific things, making their implementation and signposting one of the few scarce certainties in American foreign policy, albeit the solutions to these issues was never something I could predict.

Trade policy was a deeply held bugbear. Trump will always want tariffs to be higher because he has unique control over their level, bypassing the niceties of Congressional negotiations, and because he thinks of them as a negotiating tool. Even the US’ key role as architect of the World Trade Organisation is a bargaining chip. Every institutional set up and capability will be questioned again and used to advance Trump’s interests, so Trade Officers should start to look at what their countries buy from the US. Trump loves when countries buy American goods but hates when they run trade deficits, which obviously work against each other. So be creative – the UK, for example, runs a good deficits but a services surplus, so you can guess what gets discussed at bilateral meetings.

NATO commitments are another one, or any commitment where the result is binary. Where countries have promised the US something, and it is black and white whether they are honouring that commitment, expect President Trump to ask and remember. Any noncompliance will be brought up in bilateral forums and will form a key part of the how Trump views that country’s government and whether he will show them favour or furore.

Public support is important to Trump, regardless of the issue. Shortly, he will begin to outline a foreign policy that will look very different to President Biden’s. He will probably look very sceptically at support for Ukraine specifically and European security more generally, resurrect a more bellicose approach to China and any of its supporters in its neighbourhood, and take a much more supportive line for the Israeli government. In contrast to Trump’s first term, this time he has assembled a group of seasoned loyalists who will do his bidding, rather than try to soften his views or temper his approach. In that way, and because he controls the Senate, which will approve his political appointees, governments and diplomats need to take his words and actions much more seriously than his last time in office. There are far fewer traditional, moderate voices at the table and he and his team have had four years of practise and then four years of organisation to prepare for what comes next.

The UK’s foreign policy will necessarily have to incorporate Trump’s re-entry into the White House, but it may not be able to in ways that keep Labour’s voting coalition onside. Most Labour voters hold a negative view of President Trump, and that is before he inflames it with his Presidential microphone and bromance with Elon Musk, the owner of X. For a PM that has tried to bring the UK government closer to its traditional European allies while aping President Biden’s calls for a ceasefire in the Israel/Palestine conflict, Starmer will now have to balance the demands of office with the demands of Trump and the demands of the Labour Party.

The UK more than most, and Starmer more than others, will have a lot of ground to make up, especially after earlier comments from prominent Labour politicians like Foreign Secretary David Lammy and London’s Mayor, Sadiq Khan. Will Starmer seek carveouts from Trump’s incoming trade tariffs if it means hurting negotiations with the EU for closer trading ties to offset some of the economic losses from Brexit?

How Starmer makes low-level choices like this will affect the UK’s foreign policy for the next decade at least.

Want to hear more about what Trump’s election might mean for global politics? Sign up to our virtual event on the 14th November, where Michael will be joined by BFPG Director Evie Aspinall to explore the implications of the election result.