The mid-terms

What does the blue wave of the US mid-terms mean for the rest of the world? Even with a Democratic-controlled Senate and House, there are limits on what can be done in federal policy under the existing administration; so minds are turning to the next administration, which is likely to hew very differently to Trump’s White House on domestic politics. Assuming the 2028 election goes similarly to last week’s, there will be a window for great change in the last couple of years of this decade.

What that means for the world, and the issues we track here, though, is not clear. In late 2024 and early 2025, we decided not to focus too much on what the US was doing, but instead on how the rest of the world is reorganising around and without the US. Right now it’s even easier than usual to get caught up in the minutiae of US electoral processes and major party dynamics. But that is the point: US political arcana matter to the rest of the world, which has to pay attention because the ramifications are so profound for everyone. There’s a new unknown now, in terms of whether other countries, especially those that have recently acknowledged the dramatic hostility of the current US administration, see this as some kind of reversion to normalcy – or whether they continue to decentre the US in their lives, on the basis that the US is simply too politically unreliable to make any other option sensible.

It’s illuminating to look at the surveys of US voters on issues such as tariffs, trade, and the illegal war on Iran, the invasion of Venezuela and the genocide in Gaza. Heather Hurlburt at Chatham House says Americans have not been this angry about international affairs since 2006, and her look at various pre-election polls is insightful. On tariffs and trade, for example, a CFR survey in August found that tariffs were not overwhelmingly associated with higher cost of living:

A plurality of Americans understands tariffs as increasing prices, but they are conflicted over who pays for those increases. Fifty-one per cent of Democrats believe Americans pay tariffs; 52 per cent of Republicans say foreigners pay them.

Most Americans see Canada, Japan, Mexico, and the European Union as fair trading partners, but they are divided over what the next president should do with Trump’s tariffs on those nations. Forty per cent of Americans say fair trade means all countries are bound by the same rules, and over 50 per cent say Canada, Japan, Mexico, and the European Union are fair trading partners. Even so, around half of Americans say some type of tariff—whether limited to national security or used for leverage—should remain on those trading partners.

There is also plenty of evidence that US voters’ support for Israel has plummeted amid the genocide in Gaza. "For the first time, more than half of Americans (a combined 56%) say US military aid to Israel should either be decreased or cut altogether" says the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, which has been polling on the issue since 1978. A Rockefeller Foundation-sponsored survey found US support for global cooperation has risen 4 percentage points, to 65%, "even if it means compromising on some national interests".

Polled sentiment on big-picture topics can’t be relied upon to manifest as durable politics and policy implementation, as anyone who’s looked at the robust public support for climate action in almost every country in the world (yes, even the US!) can attest. The US remains a problematic actor on all kinds of world stages. Will the connection US voters make between the Iran war and the cost of living spur some kind of internationalist outlook?

Tim Hirschel-Burns argued a few weeks ago that the US development aid community had a powerful opportunity to improve aid budgets, not least because the repellent effects of defunding USAID had given the issue renewed public and political resonance (modelling, corroborated by on the ground reporting, suggests hundreds of thousands of deaths).

Meanwhile, the US has been sitting out the entire climate diplomacy circuit and, to some extent, sitting out the green energy tech revolution, while the rest of the world has been simultaneously appreciating and wrangling with the recent big expansion in Chinese exports of tech – electric vehicles in particular, batteries and solar panels – as well as all kinds of other technologies, including for manufacturing. The “make or buy” politics in the US around Chinese green tech imports will still be fraught in 2029. Open questions remain about whether the China Shock narrative still holds and how much hawkishness survives, given shifts in Democratic Party dynamics and a decided lack of enthusiasm among the American public.

Our big question, though, is how the rest of the world responds. US allies – big ones like the European Union and India – were attacked on trade, diplomacy and, particularly worryingly for Europe, on defence – something that leaders have taken to heart this year. Europe is gradually ridding itself of the US technology stack (an incredibly difficult goal, as Cecilia Rikap explains on an upcoming episode of our podcast). The bloc’s efforts are slow and underpowered, stymied by member states’ lack of enthusiasm for a common project, but the idea technological sovereignty is popular among voters. Meanwhile, independence from US payment architecture may keep advancing inevitably, albeit haltingly, with the introduction of the digital euro in 2029, which would also improve the conditions for an international euro. This is just Europe; China is of course making more decisive efforts in global cooperation, as are the Gulf petrostates and even Canada.

It’s hard to see all this losing momentum – the US has gone too far. The middle-income middle powers, meanwhile, have been wary of the US since well before the Trump 2.0 administration; while lower income countries have numerous firm reasons for scepticism (see, for example: trade disputes; sovereign debt resolution, Bretton Woods institutions, and financial safety nets).

COMING UP ON THE PODCAST

Our upcoming podcast episode, on Wednesday, is about autonomous weapons, which are the subject of a conference in Geneva this week; attempts at a convention on the use of such weapons are blocked by, among others, the US. (The other notable UN conference, of course, is the COP31 in Antalya, Turkiye.) Subscribe here.

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