Trump retains broad foreign-policy powers after the congressional shift
The midterms delivered a resounding defeat to Donald Trump’s Republicans and installed a Democratic-controlled US Congress, drawing relief in European capitals. The result did not remove the broad foreign-policy powers Trump retained or settle Europe’s political response. A Guardian analysis by Katherine Butler, an associate editor for Europe, examines whether the US result will weaken nationalist populist parties across Europe — a question posed in a live Q&A with correspondents after the midterms by Margaret, a Guardian reader in Switzerland: “Is Maga dead?” Butler wrote that Margaret’s query, if it expressed a hope that the Democrats’ blue wave could transform Europe’s fortunes after two years of Maga-induced trauma, was probably not alone.
Butler wrote that Trump did not need congressional approval to unleash a trade war on his supposed European allies, threaten to invade Greenland, try to stitch up Ukraine or go to war with Iran, an act that has inflated fuel and food prices. Her account also asks whether Europe’s mainstream parties can break their fatalistic mimicry of far-right policies and heed calls for democratic renewal, education, decent housing, equality and limits on the power of the big tech billionaires.
With Trump constrained by domestic politics, many European leaders fear greater confrontation abroad. Nathalie Tocci warned: “Trump and Maga have always seen Europe as the mirror image of their domestic foes: a bunch of presumptuous, woke, emasculated liberals. Now that those foes have made a comeback at home, Trump’s rancour towards Europe is likely to grow.”
The potential flashpoints include new tariff disruption, a veto of aid for Ukraine and limits on Kyiv’s access to defence technology. Paul Taylor described a scenario in which Trump could attempt to carve up eastern Europe through the “big, beautiful deal” for Ukraine that he says he is working on with Russia. At US-mediated talks opening in Abu Dhabi, delegates from Germany, France, the UK and the EU were sidelined, according to Butler.
Democratic control of Congress offers no guarantee that transatlantic relations will improve. Blanche Leridon of the Institut Montaigne thinktank in Paris said: “We have to be clear-sighted that the Democrats’ priority in Congress won’t be to re-establish a more harmonious relationship with Europe. Their foreign policy is, at this point, difficult to decipher. There isn’t a single, consistent position between the more progressive and centrist factions when it comes to either Europe or Ukraine specifically.”
The Republican defeat also has uneven political consequences across Europe. In central and eastern Europe, where the Maga spirit was heavily promoted by Viktor Orbán, some nationalist incumbents may need to perform a pivot. Poland’s conservative president Karol Nawrocki, who is backed by the opposition Eurosceptic Law and Justice party and has vaunted his proximity to Trump, now faces awkward questions. In Czechia, which has one of the most pro-Maga governments in Europe, populist PM Andrej Babiš and his far-right coalition partner, the Motorists party, have faced a wave of grassroots protests.
Italy’s approach has already been different. Far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni played up tensions with Trump months ago as a strategic move to ease voters’ concerns; the analysis said a majority of voters despised him. Elsewhere, Trump’s defeat may matter less to nationalist populist parties that are not yet in government and are polling at record levels. Their electoral standing comes amid grievances including stagnant pay, inflation and a lack of affordable housing that are often driven by global forces.
“It would be wrong to conclude that national-populist and reactionary forces are in retreat everywhere in the west,” Leridon said. “The Democrats won in the US because people were fed up with Trump.” She said that in Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić was overthrown after 14 years, but that in countries where populist forces are not in power and stand on the verge of gaining it, the calculation is different.
France illustrates why the outcome remains open. Marine Le Pen is still leading in the polls six months ahead of a presidential election fought on cost-of-living issues, and her National Rally identified Trump as a liability. Leridon said Le Pen and Jordan Bardella had recoiled from Trump’s political effect in France and from the impact of his tariffs and the war in Iran on French purchasing power.
Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland had also distanced itself from Trump. Co-leader Alice Weidel did so in response to tariffs and Greenland, and she later blamed Trump’s defeat on his broken promises about going to war with Iran.
Butler identified Spain as a critical test. Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who called a snap election for Nov. 29, welcomed Trump’s defeat as a hopeful sign for progressive forces. Public outcry over housing and wages caused Wednesday’s general strike, and momentum is with the opposition rightwing Popular Party. If the PP can coalesce with the far-right Vox party, Spain would have its first government including a far-right party since the end of the Franco dictatorship in 1975. Vox leader Santiago Abascal dismissed any suggestion of an ideological connection with Trump’s Republicans: “We are in Spain, not in Michigan,” he said after the midterms.
Butler also finds a more hopeful pattern. Leridon said: “American democracy is alive and was the big winner of these elections.” Alexander Hurst asked whether the result could be a “democratic spring,” beginning with Orbán’s defeat in Budapest in April. Julian Borger examined four pivotal elections that year—in Hungary, Serbia, Brazil and the United States—as evidence of how grassroots activism can produce surprises and perhaps begin reversing a worldwide drift toward authoritarianism.
Gen Z voters fuelled the US “blue wave,” which Butler connected to a yearning for generational change. She linked that energy with youth-led protest movements across Europe and said progressive parties might channel it into serious political change. The risk she identified was that grassroots anger could be co-opted into the anti-system nihilism that fuelled Maga, leaving France, Germany and Spain to test whether European parties can distance themselves from Trump without surrendering voters’ economic concerns.