Congress retains funding and sanctions oversight while Trump controls military action
The 2026 midterm results leave President Trump facing a remade Democratic Congress with limited power over his foreign-policy agenda. During the first half of his second term, Trump imposed high tariffs on imports, rewired global trade flows and launched two military campaigns, including an inconclusive conflict with Iran that sent energy prices rocketing. The election changes the balance in Washington but leaves global affairs as one of the main arenas in which Trump can shape his legacy.
Congress’s new leverage lies chiefly in money, law and oversight rather than military command. Trump holds exclusive command of the military, while Congress controls the purse strings for foreign wars, though lawmakers are often reluctant to withhold funding for U.S. troops serving abroad, the Council on Foreign Relations said. Lawmakers can influence defense funding, military aid and sanctions laws. Those channels give Democrats opportunities to scrutinize the administration, but operational decisions remain with the executive branch.
The question now is how the midterm results affect Trump’s decision on whether to restart strikes on Iran, as well as how he proceeds on a host of other global issues, such as trade and Ukraine. In the run-up to the midterms, the U.S. warned Gulf countries to be prepared for a short, intense military campaign after the election. In interviews after the vote, Trump seemed to play down an imminent strike, saying he had no plans for an immediate attack and would act in America’s interest.
Trump nonetheless accepted part of the conflict’s political cost. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, he said, “Iran was a piece of it,” pointing to the high gas prices the war caused as a political liability. He said he did not regret launching the war.
Vice President JD Vance separately blamed the war in Iran directly for the Republican defeat. In a Wednesday post on X, he wrote, “And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.”
U.S. military deployments continued as the election debate unfolded. Two aircraft-carrier groups and an amphibious assault-ship group were in the Arabian Sea, with a third aircraft-carrier group on the way. Some officials in the Middle East said the Democratic triumph did not lessen the likelihood of another round of war with Iran, possibly in the coming days. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei said his country would unleash a much broader response across the region should the United States escalate, in remarks published by state media Wednesday.
Nadim Koteich, an Emirati media and policy adviser, said, “Trump will not be happy to be framed as defeated by the electoral base, by the Americans, and also defeated by the Iranians. This is something he cannot swallow. He cannot tolerate, and he would probably do something.” He added, “This is more about his legacy than any strategic calculation.”
Cuba shows how the Iran conflict displaced another presidential priority. Regime change in Havana had been a priority for Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban migrants, but it faded when the United States became embroiled in war with Iran. Military and intervention plans would require an extensive nation-building strategy to transform the armed forces and a moribund economy controlled by the ruling Communist Party. Unlike Venezuela, which Trump has called the administration’s most important foreign-policy triumph, Cuba has few natural resources. A huge reconstruction job would demand intense attention and tens of billions of dollars in investment.
Israel presents a more immediate test of congressional leverage. Israel is currently one of the largest recipients of American military aid in the world. Hours before the election results, Trump said he was preparing to end that support in 2026 because Israel no longer needed it. U.S. and Israeli officials had discussed a possible phaseout for months, but Trump’s announcement of a timeline took Israeli officials by surprise.
Senate wins for candidates including Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, who campaigned on ending unconditional aid to Israel, further sparked fears among Israelis about the future of the relationship with the United States. Current and former U.S. officials said an abrupt end to U.S. military aid to Israel was unlikely because Congress had already committed the funding.
Ukraine presents a mixed picture. In Kyiv, there was more hope than expectation of a change in Trump’s approach to Russia’s invasion. Trump has cut nearly all U.S. aid for Ukraine, pressured the country to hand more territory to Russia and lambasted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whom he blamed for a war that Moscow started. Trump has sought rapprochement with Russian President Vladimir Putin, relaxed sanctions on Russian energy and tried to stop Ukrainian airstrikes on Russian oil refineries.
Congress can influence defense funding, including military aid to Ukraine, as well as sanctions laws, said Dmytro Sherengovsky, a political scientist at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, Ukraine. “However, a significant proportion of operational decisions regarding military aid and the implementation of sanctions will remain within the remit of the executive branch,” he wrote on Facebook.
Valerii Pekar, an entrepreneur and lecturer at the Kyiv Mohyla Business School, said the United States was likely to focus on domestic issues for the next two years. He said congressional hearings and investigations could reveal more about Russian influence in the United States.
Europe is already ramping up military spending and preparing for the United States to play a smaller role in the continent’s security, after Trump questioned U.S. membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and threatened to seize Greenland, the territory of ally Denmark. Berlin, in particular, has massively ramped up procurement. By early next year, some of the new equipment will start making its way to troops, according to German security officials.
In the standoff with Trump over Greenland, some allies established a formula for handling the U.S. president that involved both muscle-flexing and accommodation. European countries deployed forces to the island, and the European Union suspended ratification of its trade deal with Washington. But the allies also offered to set up a NATO mission in the Arctic and start talks between the U.S., Greenland and Denmark about the island’s future.
“The U.S.’s role in Europe will get smaller and the threats against Europe are going to increase,” said Giuseppe Spatafora, a policy analyst for trans-Atlantic relations at the EU Institute for Security Studies, the European Union’s foreign-policy and security think tank. “That’s why Europe needs to build up its capabilities and deterrence options while maintaining active cooperation with the U.S.”
Jörn Fleck, senior director of the Europe Center at the Atlantic Council, a U.S.-based think tank, said Trump was likely to emerge from the midterms in dealmaking mode and would want to cement his legacy over the next two years, facing friends and foes with risks and opportunities. U.S. allies in Asia worry that Trump will sideline their security and economic interests in pursuit of a deal with Chinese leader Xi Jinping or North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. Those concerns won’t vanish along with Republican seats in Congress.
Trump was scheduled to visit China this month for an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Shenzhen after a summit with Xi in Washington in September. The diplomatic activity had cooled tensions between the two superpowers. Ryan Hass, a China expert at the Brookings Institution and former Obama administration official, said, “Beijing’s goal is to elongate this period of fragile calm in the relationship to gain time and space to build greater self-reliance.”
Wu Xinbo, director of Fudan University’s Center for American Studies in Shanghai, said the Democratic sweep would push Chinese officials to look beyond Trump. Wu said Beijing would maintain an assertive posture with Washington, said, “We feel more confident,” and added that Beijing would continue to “play hardball to make sure we can remain in a relatively advantageous position.”
Even without a Republican majority in Congress, Trump was expected to keep pressing partners for trade concessions. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said he was prepared to sit out the next two years if needed and strike a deal with Trump’s successor. Few can afford to run the clock: apart from China, most Asian nations have little bargaining power against the U.S. when it comes to trade. Allies such as Japan and South Korea are on the hook for hundreds of billions of dollars of investment in the U.S. as part of trade deals negotiated early in Trump’s second term.
Japan is broadly sticking with its commitments, though many projects remain on the drawing board. In January, Trump threatened to raise levies on South Korea because of a lack of progress implementing its side of the pact, and in August he ordered an abrupt curtailment of joint U.S.-South Korean military drills. Southeast Asia’s export economies, such as Vietnam and Thailand, have been racing to complete trade deals with the U.S. in an effort to pre-empt new tariffs the Trump administration could pass, while others, including Indonesia, are taking their time ratifying new trade concessions.
Trump could also renew his trade conflict with the European Union. The two economies reached a trade deal last year, but continuing U.S. trade investigations could lead to renewed upheaval. The United States has launched a probe into overcapacity by the European Union and other economies and opened an investigation into Germany’s pharmaceutical pricing. The German VDMA engineering lobby said it did not expect Democrats to wrest back control of trade policy.
“I think there’s a serious risk that we will see more U.S. tariffs threats against the EU before the end of the year,” said Laura von Daniels, a senior fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.
Trump has also ripped up parts of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement he signed in his first administration and has mused about terminating the agreement. Such a move would likely attract intense congressional scrutiny. Talks with Mexico and Canada, the United States’ top trading partners, stalled amid objections from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, according to people familiar with the negotiations. In the case of Mexico, Lutnick opposed significant reductions in the 25% tariff on Mexican automobiles and the 50% levies on steel and aluminum.
Across the foreign-policy portfolio, Democrats gain leverage over spending, sanctions, hearings and investigations but limited authority over military campaigns or presidential diplomacy. The election therefore strengthens congressional oversight without transferring control of the armed forces, leaving Trump’s foreign-policy record as a central part of his legacy.