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World Leaders Are Getting Sick and Tired Of Donald Trump’s Antics
0 Share Newsweek is a Trust Project member See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. Before Donald Trump was President of the United States, he was a real-estate magnate in Manhattan who courted celebrity about as much as he courted the big deal. His negotiating style wasn’t prefaced on traditional give-and-take but rather on pummeling the other side into submission. "The best thing you can do is deal from strength, and leverage is the biggest strength you can have," Trump wrote in his 1987 bestseller, The Art of the Deal . "Leverage is having something the other guy wants. Or better yet, needs."
For a while, Trump’s strong-arm tactics worked after he ascended to the White House. After all, foreign leaders can’t just stick their heads in the sand when the most powerful person on the planet makes threats. More often than not, those on the receiving end of those threats offered Trump concessions in the hope he would take the worst-case scenario off the table.
Trump’s coercion paid him dividends in the first year of his second term. Mexico was hit with tariffs , forcing President Claudia Sheinbaum to deploy 10,000 troops along the U.S.-Mexico border to put a dent in the northerly flow of migrants and fentanyl.
Deathly afraid that Trump would withdraw the United States from NATO, the alliance’s members flattered the American president before signing up to a massive hike in defense spending.
And after Trump used his inauguration address to threaten a takeover of the Panama Canal due to what he argued was excessive Chinese influence there, the Panamanian government sought to mollify his anger by withdrawing from Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative and declaring Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison’s operations in the strategic waterway unconstitutional.
Yet as Trump’s second term grinds on, small and middle powers who may have thought submission was their best course of action are now fighting back. Trump is as loud and brash as ever, but the results aren’t nearly as impressive for him today as they were in the past. States as varied as Brazil , Canada and Spain are dismissing Trump’s noise and using it as an opportunity for a strategic reassessment.
Brazil is the poster-child of this trend. In July 2025, the Trump administration declared Brazil a national security threat to the United States, accused the Brazilian government of undermining the rule of law and denounced its judicial system for "persecuting" former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.
Based on this justification, the White House slapped Brazil with an additional tariff of 40 percent in a bid to pressure President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva into dropping Bolsonaro’s case and changing Brazil's trade practices.
The outcome, however, was far from what Trump expected . Instead of capitulating, Lula da Silva argued that Washington was in essence trying to extort a proud, independent Brazil for political purposes. He played the nationalism card and projected himself as the defender of Brazilian sovereignty.
The strategy worked—Lula saw his approval ratings go up; searched for alternative trading partners to lessen dependency on the United States as an export market; and dropped opposition to negotiating a regional trade pact with Beijing. Trump’s decision to leverage America’s economic firepower merely induced Brazil to double down on its economic relationship with China, the very power the Trump administration views as its biggest non-hemispheric competitor in Latin America. Brazilian exports to China have risen by 22 percent year-on-year.
Canada is increasingly resistant to getting pushed around too. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney isn’t jettisoning the strategic alliance with the United States—indeed it would be foolish to do so given Canada’s status as a neighbor and the deep military-to-military ties it shares with Washington as part of the North American Aerospace Command.
But what Ottawa regards as U.S. bellicosity and pettiness—hints about turning Canada into America's 51st state; Washington’s 50 percent levies on a large list of Canadian goods; and Trump holding up the formal opening of a new cross-border bridge over tolls—is forcing the Canadian government to entertain non-U.S. options in everything from defense to economics. One poll from earlier this year found that only 9 percent of Canadians believed the United States was a trustworthy ally.
The Carney administration is therefore diversifying. Canada, which historically relies on its southern neighbor for the bulk of its military equipment, is now reaching out to Europe for certain combat systems and seeking to invest in its own defense industry.
Canadian officials aim to award 70 percent of defense contracts to Canadian defense firms over the next decade, both to create more Canadian jobs and ensure that Canada’s military isn’t overly reliant on a single supplier. This, combined with Canada’s goal of exporting 55 percent of its natural gas to non-U.S. customers over a similar time-frame, demonstrates the degree to which Ottawa is trying to limit its exposure to Trump’s impulses.
Europe is tired of the antics as well. When Trump implied that U.S. military force was on the table to acquire Greenland, the EU banded together and essentially drew a line in the sand. When Trump insisted he would cut off all trade to Spain in retaliation for its decision to block the U.S. military from using its bases for the war in Iran, Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez shrugged.
The United Kingdom was more sensitive to Trump’s anger but has nevertheless repeated its position that direct U.K. military participation in the war won’t happen.
Trump’s old playbook is wearing out for two reasons.
First, countries doubt Trump can be placated or that any agreements they make with him will actually be implemented. He signs deals, only to ignore them when they become inconvenient or renegotiate them...
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