FP (Foreign Policy)
6 Trump Lessons for Global Leaders in 2026
FP columnists on how the world could handle the new Washington.
December 29, 2025, 8:00 AM
By Zongyuan Zoe Liu, C. Raja Mohan, James Crabtree, Elisabeth Braw, Agathe Demarais, and Steven A. Cook
An illustration shows U.S. President Donald Trump's face on a textured wall. The upper part of the wall is cracked.
Michelle Thompson illustration for Foreign Policy
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China
India
Europe
Elisabeth Braw
Steven A. Cook
Agathe Demarais
C. Raja Mohan
Zongyuan Zoe Liu
At the start of each year, we ask some of our columnists to look into their crystal ball and tell us what they anticipate for the year ahead.
2026
FP’s look ahead
This year, we asked our writers to distill the lessons of U.S. President Donald Trump’s first year back in the White House—and how global leaders will likely apply these lessons going forward. Much more than during his first presidential term, his administration has revolutionized U.S. foreign policy, blanketing the world with tariffs, downgrading alliances, and seeking accommodation with adversaries. It has been messy and often unpredictable, but foreign leaders are learning how to manage their relations with Washington in a more volatile age.
Here are six lessons from Trump’s second term that will shape global politics in 2026.—Stefan Theil, deputy editor
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Lesson for China: How to Play Trump
By Zongyuan Zoe Liu, FP columnist and fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations
A red tractor is seen from above pulling planting equipment across a bare field.
Dan Duffy, an American farmer concerned about the effect of tariffs on exports to China, plants soybeans in Dwight, Illinois, on April 28, 2025.Scott Olson/Getty Images
While much of the world recoiled at the Trump administration’s tariff ultimatums, Beijing pushed back and emerged from 2025 largely unscathed. The lessons were simple but consequential: Trump is now far more unrestrained, less predictable, and more willing to wield the U.S. economy as a weapon than during his first term. Yet even the sharpest U.S. pressure could be bent, blunted, and occasionally reversed.
Three lessons stand out.
First, Trump’s maximalist threats rarely stick. Headline-grabbing tariffs, sanctions, and tech bans often yielded to market pressures, lobbying, or the president’s appetite for any deal he could call a victory.
Second, China’s accelerated trade diversification gave it room to absorb U.S. pressure and avoid signaling weakness.
Third, targeted retaliation against U.S. supply chain vulnerabilities and politically sensitive constituencies proved far more effective than broad counterstrikes.
Even more revealing was China’s execution of a playbook refined during Trump’s first-term trade war and informed by nearly a decade of experience navigating U.S. export control regimes. Beijing has refined its own export control regime and tested it against Washington by restricting exports of critical minerals and other upstream inputs—not just symbolically but with teeth. The results confirmed what Chinese officials may have long suspected: The U.S. supply chain is brittle. Price spikes, manufacturer complaints, and lobbying pressure offered tangible proof. Trump’s reversal to allow shipments of Nvidia H200 chips to China was not goodwill; it was evidence that Beijing’s calibrated pressure has worked.
The United States’ latest National Security Strategy (NSS) reinforces this reading. Analysts noted its downgrading of geopolitical struggle, instead framing China primarily as an economic and technological competitor. The document does not promise détente, but it confirms the battlefield: economic and technological leverage—the very arena where China had just proven its hand.
This experience hardened another lesson: As the Trump administration approaches the midterm elections, the need to energize core supporters could make it even less institutionally anchored, more transactional, and more focused on short-term political wins. Trump may thus be even more susceptible to targeted pressure. He might be willing to make trade or regulatory concessions that benefit China—easing various tariffs, adjusting technology licensing rules, or allowing specific Chinese firms into U.S. markets—while framing the moves as victories: a successfully negotiated “deal,” a “win” on the trade deficit, or China stepping back from some of its retaliation. Even if Trump’s concessions do not immediately compromise core U.S. national security interests, they could create accumulated vulnerabilities that China may exploit over time.
Beijing’s posture for 2026 is clear. It will pursue narrow, transactional deals that allow Trump to claim victories while conceding little. It will deepen ties with Europe, Southeast Asia, and the Gulf states to dilute U.S. leverage and accelerate domestic technological autonomy. Volatility is now structural; even Trump’s planned April visit will not be able to repair the erosion of stability and trust. China does not expect détente, only time: time to test U.S. vulnerabilities, fortify its own system, and ensure that Washington’s coercions increasingly lose their bite. Patience, precision, and calibrated leverage have become Beijing’s defining arsenal of statecraft.
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U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping arrive for trade talks in Busan, South Korea, on Oct. 30.
Insider
How Beijing Views Trump This article has an audio recording
A top China scholar and former Biden administration advisor on the Trump-Xi meeting and the future of the U.S.-China relationship.
By Ravi Agrawal
Lesson for India: Repair U.S. Relations
By C. Raja Mohan, FP columnist and professor at O.P. Jindal Global University
Modi waring a striped suit jacket folds his hands in front of his face as he walks forward with Trump in a dark jacket and burgundy tie walks behind him.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and U.S. President Donald Trump arrive for a news conference at the White House in Washington on Feb. 13, 2025. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Few governments greeted Trump’s return to the U.S. presidency with as much enthusiasm as that of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. And few faced greater disappointment.
Modi was one of the first world leaders to meet Trump after his inauguration, and India quickly launched trade talks in recognition that commerce was now a central axis of U.S. foreign policy.
Yet hopes for elevating the India-U.S. strategic partnership came crashing down by August, when Trump raised the tariff on Indian goods to 50 percent. Part of the problem was Modi’s misreading of Trump’s grand delusions about peacemaking, especially regarding India’s military clashes with Pakistan. Had Modi been more effusive about Trump’s role in saving the subcontinent from itself, things might have unfolded a little differently between New Delhi and Washington.
Modi’s advisors had a decent grasp of the coalition that propelled Trump back into the White House. Yet they were blindsided by the power and fervor of the MAGA movement, which turned on India and its diaspora with unexpected force. Since then, New Delhi has calibrated its approach, which now rests on three principles: avoid public arguments with Trump despite his repeated claims (that New Delhi thinks are false) of having ended India’s war with Pakistan; praise his peace efforts in Gaza and Ukraine; and keep the broader U.S. system engaged on trade, technology, and defense.
In 2026, New Delhi sees more political space opening in Washington as Trump’s domestic standing shows signs of erosion. India’s strategy now turns on three axes.
First, mobilizing traditional pro-India constituencies—the security establishment, the U.S. Congress, business groups, and diaspora networks that fell silent under the weight of Trump’s dominance in 2025. If they were reluctant to speak up before, then some of them might now help rebalance the relationship. New Delhi also knows that it must find a way to make inroads with at least parts of the MAGA coalition.
Second, India is determined to avoid another crisis with Pakistan that might invite Trump’s meddling. A fresh round of military conflict could place India at the receiving end of Trump’s wild impulses once again.
Third, and most consequential, New Delhi is accelerating its diversification strategy. The tariff shock pushed India to broaden export destinations, fast-track trade talks with Europe, and expand economic links with Russia and other emerging markets. In security policy, India is hedging more deliberately—maintaining the U.S. partnership while easing tensions with China, deepening ties with Russia, and strategically engaging with Europe.
Just like people, countries get used to pain. As Modi learns to manage Trump’s tariffs, he has discovered that standing firm against Washington’s bullying plays well at home and earns respect abroad. For India’s traditional skeptics of the United States, Trump’s second term is a reminder not to place too many strategic eggs in the U.S. basket. For the optimists, the turbulence of 2025 may yet give way to a better footing in 2026 as Trump descends from the year’s Olympian political heights. Underlying that optimism is India’s bet that more than 25 years of bipartisan U.S. investment in a strategic partnership with it is unlikely to be destroyed in a year or two by even the most unpredictable White House.
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Trump and Modi sit beside each other in chairs upholstered in cream fabric, shaking hands. Both men smile slightly at each other. Two staffers are visible seated behind them.
Analysis
How to Get the U.S.-India Relationship Back on Track This article has an audio recording
Trump is threatening one of the world’s most important bilateral relationships. He alone can fix it.
By Sumona Guha
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