The election of Donald Trump is a sad reminder that terrible situations can always get worse. Even if you believe that Harris ran a bad campaign and deserved to lose, it’s hard to find any silver lining in today’s results. The Democrats aren’t going to enter into a period of self-reflection and come to the conclusion that they should have listened to left-wing pro-Palestine activists – if anything, they’re probably going to blame them. Life is going to get harder in the US for women, migrants and LGBTQ+ people, particularly the trans community, but the effects won’t end there. Because the US remains the world’s hegemonic power, both economically and militarily, the decisions made by its President can spell immiseration, suffering and death for millions of people across the globe.

We spoke to several foreign policy experts to find out what the foreign policy of a second Trump term might look like.

RUSSIA AND UKRAINE

Throughout the last year, Russia has been slowly gaining ground in Ukraine, while Ukraine has been forced to abandon its efforts to reclaim its conquered territories in favour of fighting a purely defensive war. Recent reports suggest almost a million people have been killed so far, Ukraine is facing troop shortages and a desertion crisis, and military conscription is causing widespread discontent among the Ukrainian public. The war is still grinding on with no end in sight, and there is mounting international pressure to bring it to an end.

Whether Trump will actually be able to cut off military funding, as he has previously threatened, remains in doubt. “I think he’ll run into opposition in Congress,” says Derek Davison, a writer and analyst who runs the Foreign Exchanges Substack and who is one of the hosts of American Prestige, a podcast about foreign policy which I’d highly recommend. As of today, Trump has retaken control of the US Senate and could potentially win the House of Representatives too. “But even if Congress returns with both chambers controlled by Republicans there’s still a sizable block of old guard Republicans who would be very resistant to cutting off aid to Ukraine entirely,” says Davidson.

Still, Davison believes there’s going to be a broad push in 2025 to bring the war to a close, which will involve pressure on the Ukrainians to concede some territorial loss. Not only is the spigot of Western support starting to dry up, he says, but that support is reaching the limits of its effectiveness: Ukraine is now facing problems that cannot be solved through military aid alone, not least the reluctance of Ukrainians to fight in a conflict which no longer seems to be going their way.

But Trump cutting off aid abruptly could make an already dire situation even worse. “The things are now, Ukraine maybe has to start thinking about losing a certain amount of territory. That could change quickly if the Ukrainian defensive line collapses for lack of weapons,” says Davison. “There could be a much more substantial Russian advance and Ukraine could face huge territorial losses. So you have to weigh up how many casualties and how much suffering could be caused in a more rapid Russian advance versus this long, grinding process where people are dying all the time but at a lower rate. Trump is probably more inclined to pull the rug out, which is potentially more dangerous than pushing for a negotiated settlement.”

Trump is probably more inclined to pull the rug out [from under Ukraine] which is potentially more dangerous than pushing for a negotiated settlement

PALESTINE

Under Biden, the US already has a policy of unconditional support towards Israel, regardless of how many war crimes it commits or how flagrantly it disregards international law, which places a limit on how drastically different a Trump presidency will be. “US policies toward the Middle East will not change substantially. They may be hardened, but hardened with continuity,” says Dr Gilbert Achcar, Professor of Development Studies and International Relations at SOAS and the author of The New Cold War: The United States, Russia and China. But he adds that Trump’s win does make the prospect of US involvement in a war with Iran more likely. 

We can also expect an increase in the suppression of the Palestine solidarity movement within the US, which Trump has promised to “set back by 25 or 30 years”. This has already been happening under a Democratic administration, but it’s likely Trump will now escalate things even further – earlier this year, for example, he threatened to deport foreign pro-Palestine activists.

A recent UN report estimated that, if the current Israeli blockade of the strip continues, it could take 350 years to rebuild it. But for the incoming Trump administration, the destruction of Gaza spells a potentially lucrative opportunity. Jared Kushner – Trump’s son-in-law and a senior advisor during his previous term – is already eyeing up Gaza’s potentially “very valuable […] waterfront property” and advocating for Israel to “move out” its civilian population to being the process of “cleaning it up,” while Trump himself has said that Gaza could be “better than Monaco” if it was “rebuilt the right way”.  Israel is already carrying out a large-scale ethnic cleansing in Northern Gaza but, according to Dr Achcar, a full annexation is more likely under Trump.

CHINA AND TAIWAN

During his first term as president, Trump took a much more aggressive stance towards China than Obama did, effectively launching a trade war by imposing exorbitant new tariffs on Chinese goods. Biden for the most part continued these policies and Trump is now promising to escalate them even further.

One big question is whether China will invade Taiwan and what the US would do if that happened. The PRC officially subscribes to the “One China” principle, believing Taiwan to be an inalienable part of China which should one day be under its control, and in recent years it has begun to behave more aggressively towards its neighbour, organising military drills nearby in what many analysts have interpreted as an attempt at intimidation. But whether or not an invasion is on the cards in the neear future is difficult to say. 

“It is a tough question because even though there are a number of factors at play, the ultimate decision for this rests in the hands of a very small number of individuals, and possibly only in one (Xi Jinping),” says Professor James Lin, a historian of Taiwan at the University of Washington and the author of In the Global Vanguard. Agrarian Development and the Making of Modern Taiwan. “Even though there are many scholars who study Xi professionally, we at best have an opaque, unidirectional understanding of his thinking on this matter, so a lot of what we do is interpreting signs and making best guesses.” 

Professor Lin isn’t sure that Trump’s victory will really affect the PRC’s calculus much. “Trump seems to approach complicated foreign policy situations in a transactional, business-like manner, thinking that horse trading can achieve diplomatic outcomes,” he says. “The Taiwan situation is one where there are structural factors, such as the importance of nationalism in China to the CCP’s legitimacy, and the divergence of Taiwanese society from Chinese identity, that are beyond any individual’s control, even a US President.” Trump’s policy thought tends towards a reluctance to commit US resources for non-US interests, and he has repeatedly suggested that Taiwan should pay for its own self-defence. The stance he takes towards Taiwan during his second administration, Lin suggests, is likely to depend on the advisors who surround him.

Bolsanaro will have a great ally. Maybe he’ll come back or someone even worse will emerge in Brazil

LATIN AMERICA

According to Francisco Carbello, a lecturer in the Politics and Culture of Latin America at Goldsmiths, University of London, Latin America hasn’t been at the centre of US foreign policy for some time. “That has been positive for Latin America in many respects, because it was a time in which we started having progressive governments who were able to challenge US hegemony. The only really important thing for the US is the Mexico-US border.”

Along with the countries of Central America, Mexico stands to suffer the most under a Trump presidency. This is mostly due to his economic policies, which include plans to introduce new tariffs of ten to 20 per cent on all imports and to renegotiate an agreement which currently removes barriers to trade between Mexico and the US. “More than 80 per cent of what Mexico exports goes to the US, so in that sense, Mexico is really, really targeted by these tariffs,” explains Dr Carbello. These policies will also make it harder for Chinese companies to set up shop in Mexico, which its government looks to as an important source of investment, and could ravage its automobile industry, which is heavily geared towards US exports. A plan proposed by JD Vance to tax “remittances” – the money which foreign workers in the US send back home – could have a similarly disastrous effect on the economies of Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras.

A Trump presidency will present a great opportunity for Latin America’s right-wing authoritarian political movements. “Bolsanaro will have a great ally. Maybe he’ll come back or someone even worse will emerge in Brazil,” he says. “Javier Milei, the president of Argentina, is going to feel very empowered to have an ally in Washington. Bukele in El Salvador is going to feel very protected. Chile has its own deviations towards the extreme right. There will be support for these authoritarian, populist right-wing politicians, and there will be money, and probably the US embassies will be working on their behalf.”

While the damage caused to Latin America by a second Trump term would most likely be economic and diplomatic, there are worrying signs that he may pursue a more aggressive approach. Over the last few years, several Republicans have advocated for the US to take the drastic step of invading Mexico, framed as an effort to target drug cartels: this sounds far-fetched, but according to a memoir written by his former defence secretary, Trump himself proposed firing missiles over the border. Dr Fernando doesn’t think this is particularly likely, but neither does he rule it out: “To be honest, everything is within the realm of possibilities now, after what we have witnessed in both the US and the rest of the world with the extreme right, after what we have seen in Gaza and Lebanon, and the way in which Netanyahu has disregarded every convention of war and international institution. We live in a very dangerous and strange moment in history.”

THE UK

Despite the gushing congratulations offered by Keir Starmer and other senior Labour figures, we can expect that relations between the UK and the US will be strained by Trump’s victory. Foreign secretary David Lammy now finds himself in an awkward situation, where he will be forced to rub shoulders with a man whom he has previously (and rightly) described as “deluded, xenophobic, narcissistic” and a “racist KKK and Nazi sympathiser.” To make matters worse, Trump has recently filed a legal complaint against Labour for “foreign election interference” after the party sent over canvassers to support Harris’s campaign, and he continues to be an enthusiastic supporter of Nigel Farage.

Since the end of the Second World War, the transatlantic “special relationship” has meant that Britain has mostly adopted whatever foreign policy stance the US wants it to, but there may be conflict ahead on the issue of Ukraine: Labour has just pledged £3 billion a year to support the war effort “for as long as it takes”, while Trump is determined to cut off funding altogether. But perhaps Starmer and Trump can bond over their shared commitment to providing unconditional support to Israel as it carries out a genocide.