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.
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
JUMP TO TOPIC AND AUTHOR
Lesson for China: How to Play Trump
By Zongyuan Zoe Liu, FP columnist and fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations
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.
Lesson for India: Repair U.S. Relations
By C. Raja Mohan, FP columnist and professor at O.P. Jindal Global University
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.
Lesson for Allies: Become Porcupines
By James Crabtree, FP columnist and visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations
Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te inspects a military drill at Hualien Air Force Base in Hualien, Taiwan, on July 23, 2024. Annabelle Chih/Getty Images
As U.S. allies and partners adapt to the revolution in U.S. foreign policy under Trump, one word best captures the grim strategic calculus they now confront: porcupine. From Ukraine, the Baltic states, and Poland to Taiwan and Japan, potentially vulnerable nations are all drawing the same uncomfortable conclusion from the past year—that survival in Trump’s new world order no longer depends on old-fashioned U.S. guarantees but on making yourself too painful to attack.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky publicly acknowledged in December that NATO membership, a cornerstone of his country’s strategic aspirations since the first Russian invasion in 2014, is no longer a realistic goal. Instead, Ukrainian and European leaders are focused on a more pragmatic objective: securing a cease-fire that provides enough breathing space to rebuild military capabilities sufficient to deter future Russian aggression. “Ukraine must become a steel porcupine, undigestible for potential invaders,” as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen put it recently.
The United States’ new National Security Strategy shows that Washington’s commitment to the rest of Europe’s security is also conditional at best. What holds for Ukraine surely holds for Russia’s other potential targets, especially now that European NATO members can no longer count on the former leader of the trans-Atlantic West. Across Europe, the Trump shock has pushed countries to accelerate what was already their most significant rearmament in a generation, with major powers like Germany and Poland dramatically expanding their military budgets.
Taiwan has embraced much of the same calculus. Washington’s security commitments to Taipei have long been officially ambiguous, but that strategic ambiguity has now been replaced by changing presidential whims. This will be especially true in the coming months, as Trump focuses on securing something he can call a “deal” with China and a state visit to go with it.
Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te recently announced an ambitious defense buildup that will raise military spending to 3 percent of GDP in 2026 and 5 percent by the end of the decade, reflecting alarm about the island’s strategic vulnerability. Taipei’s investments include mobile anti-ship missiles, mines, and distributed air defense systems—an arsenal of porcupine weapons designed to make any Chinese invasion attempt costlier as U.S. support becomes less certain.
As in Europe, long-standing U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific studied Trump’s erratic approach in 2025 and saw wisdom in developing sharper defensive quills of their own. Japan is planning to accelerate its defense transformation, with military spending on track to exceed 2 percent of GDP in 2026, one year earlier than originally planned.
During the Cold War and post-Cold War eras, Washington built an order where allies could thrive under extended U.S. deterrence. Many duly prized their reliance on U.S. security guarantees. Now that Trump has made it abundantly clear that the United States will honor commitments only when its president is interested in doing so, those same nations are deciding that bristly steel spines provide the best defense of all.
Lesson for CEOs: Think Twice About Investing
By Elisabeth Braw, FP columnist and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council
A banner depicting U.S. President Donald Trump as a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent is displayed by a protester at Incheon Airport in South Korea on Sept. 12, 2025. Anthony Wallace/AFP via Getty Images
There were many Trump surprises in 2025, including several that affected the world of business. One particular incident surprised and shocked executives: The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s detention of nearly 500 Hyundai and LG workers in Georgia in September.
The workers, you’ll recall, included 317 South Koreans who had come to Georgia to help set up a new plant that belonged to the two South Korean manufacturing giants. Setting up a complex modern factory involves specialized skills, and Hyundai and LG couldn’t find such expertise in Georgia on the quick. There was urgency, too: Trump had just imposed a 25 percent tariff on U.S. imports from South Korea, and Seoul was eager to please the White House by showing how much its companies could invest in the United States. The notoriously long wait involved in getting a H-1B or similar work visa threatened to derail this effort. As reported by the New York Times, the South Koreans arrived in the United States on B-1 visas for short-term business visitors and the ESTA visa waiver program, which also allows short-term business visits. That didn’t suit ICE, which detained them.
The news came as a shock to manufacturing executives who had been considering investing in the United States. With China becoming more hostile to the West, many Western manufacturers had made plans to “friendshore” to the United States, and Trump had them to do so in no uncertain terms (think tariffs) encouraged. Bringing industry back to the United States is, after all, the core of his economic program. The Trump shock that struck the executives was the realization that doing what he likes by setting up manufacturing in the United States could backfire against their businesses. That risk goes beyond ICE’s detention of workers. Any company manufacturing in the United States that uses parts from around the world—which is just about every major manufacturer today—now gets hit by multiple heavy tariffs.
In 2026, I wouldn’t be surprised if this Trump shock prompts executives to look at non-U.S. destinations for their facilities. From Vietnam to Quebec, countries and regions have been rolling out the welcome mat for companies seeking to diversify their production away from China, and these jurisdictions are likely to ramp up their efforts. The United States is still an attractive business location, but companies hate nothing more than uncertainty. Manufacturing includes many stages, complex supply chains, and investments planned for a long-term horizon. If any part malfunctions, experiences turbulence, or is suddenly disrupted by a new policy, the whole chain gets out of whack.
The China shock of the early 2000s caused wage depression and the loss of manufacturing jobs across the Western world. The upcoming Trump shock will be different: It will be executives’ awakening to the reality that a Trumpian United States is a very different place to do business from what they expected.
Lesson for Europe: Keep Calm and Carry On
By Agathe Demarais, FP columnist and senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen meets with Trump in Turnberry, Scotland, on July 27, 2025. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Last spring, U.S. Rep. Warren Davidson introduced the Trump Derangement Syndrome Research Act, a bill ordering the country’s National Institutes of Health to research why anyone would despise Trump and his policies. Some foreign policymakers could very well be suffering from a similar syndrome: an onset of anxiety that leads them to adopt mind-boggling policies. One such example is the trade agreement that Japan signed with the United States last year, which pledged that $550 billion in Japanese taxpayers’ money will be spent in the United States by January 2029.
So far, European leaders have managed to dodge the worst symptoms of this dangerous syndrome. Despite claims to the contrary, the U.S.-European Union trade deal struck in July is far from a European capitulation. Instead, Brussels seems already to have learned some lessons for handling Trump. First, Brussels avoided wasting time trying to talk Trump out of his love for tariffs and settled for 15 percent. Second, EU leaders smartly resisted the urge to impose retaliatory tariffs that would only have hurt their own companies and consumers. Third, the EU focused on unity: individual European governments managed to suppress their instincts to rush to Washington to ink bilateral deals, which would have weakened the EU’s collective bargaining power.
In 2026 European leaders will have ample opportunity to refine their playbook for managing Trump. A first transatlantic battle concerns Ukraine. In November, a proposed U.S.-Russian peace deal over the Europeans’ and Ukrainians’ heads made it very clear that Trump has his eyes set on $300 billion in frozen Russian central bank reserves, held mainly in Belgium and, to a lesser extent, France and other EU states. Second, Washington will probably pile on the pressure to force Europe to water down its digital rules—including for transparency, content moderation, and data privacy—in return for lower tariffs on EU-made steel. Third, this year’s G-20 summit at a Trump-owned golf resort near Miami, Florida, may be full of surprises. It is not hard to imagine Trump using the gathering as a golden opportunity to cajole and coerce leaders representing more than 80 percent of the global economy to sign bilateral deals benefiting the United States. To wage these three battles, the EU will need to keep calm and carry on. For Europe, self-help and unity remain the mantras of the day.
Lesson for Israel: Trump Could Easily Rethink Aid
By Steven A. Cook, FP columnist and fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations
U.S. military personnel stand aboard a vessel that ran aground at a beach in Ashdod, Israel, on May 25, 2024. Oren Ziv/AFP via Getty Images
To say that Trump’s approach to the Middle East has been a surprise is to diminish the meaning of the word. Let’s review: He ordered air strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, forced a cease-fire on Israel and Hamas, and met with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa—the maybe former jihadist—in the Oval Office. The United States is now sponsoring nation-building in Gaza, trying to disarm Hezbollah, pushing for normal ties between Israel and Lebanon, and engaged in extensive discussions to extend security guarantees to Saudi Arabia.
This was not the withdrawal from the Middle East that Trump supporters and sympathizers told everyone would be his approach to the region when he returned to office almost one year ago. There may be an “America First” foreign policy in the minds of MAGA and the movement’s think tanks, but the White House abides by no such doctrine. It turns out that U.S. foreign policy, including in the Middle East, is based on Trump’s gut, which is what he has been telling everyone who cares to listen. If you need written confirmation, the latest NSS is remarkable for its inconsistency—and for being hilariously at odds with Trump’s actions in the region.
So what will Trump do in 2026? I never bet, but I will wager that he is going to shake things up when it comes to U.S. military aid to Israel. Although the current aid agreement does not expire until late in Trump’s term, the topic is already on his mind. Meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House last April, Trump said, “We give Israel $4 billion a year. That’s a lot. Congratulations, by the way.” That should be a heads up that Trump does not think this is a great deal, even though the Israelis spend all this assistance in the United States.
There are lots of questions in both capitals about the extension of aid. So far, Netanyahu advisor Ron Dermer has proposed a final 20-year agreement, after which the aid would stop. Phasing out U.S. military assistance is a good idea, but to get Trump on board, the Israelis will have to offer him something big. They don’t have the resources to promise up to $1 trillion in investment like the Saudis have pledged, so they will have to get creative. A central theme of Trump’s three runs for the White House was always his argument that Washington extends itself at great costs for global peace and stability but never gets anything in return. It is now the Israelis’ turn to pay up.
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