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There has probably never been an American president whose actions reverberated globally quite like this. Donald Trump has scrambled politics not only in the United States but across the democratic world. His disdain for the world order, admiration for strength, and total lack of scruple will be on grand display this week in elections in Canada, Australia, and Romania.
In Canada's election today, whatever the final result, we have seen a remarkable liberal comeback fueled by burning rage at Trump, and at the MAGA movement more widely.
Canada entered the 2025 campaign in a sour mood. Inflation had strained household budgets, while a series of minor scandals—including ethics violations involving Justin Trudeau's cabinet ministers—sapped public trust. Polls showed the Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre surging, buoyed by promises of economic renewal and tougher immigration controls. The Liberals, trailing badly, looked finished. The sanctimonious Trudeau, a lightning rod for the anti-woke backlash that exists even in Canada, resigned.
But Trump, freshly inaugurated, intervened in his own way: by insulting Canada, threatening spectacularly unjustified tariffs, and mocking its sovereignty while suggesting it could become a U.S. state. The effect was electric. Canadians, polite but proud, recoiled. Suddenly the Liberals are on fire, and their leader Mark Carney, a respected former central banker, seems headed for victory.
Carney has vowed to retaliate strongly against any U.S. economic aggression, proposing targeted tariffs and rallying other allies to isolate Trump's America diplomatically if needed. His platform stresses protecting Canadian sovereignty and economic independence. A Carney-led Canada could be a thornier, less cooperative neighbor for Washington than ever before. Should Carney win, U.S. businesses could face new trade barriers at a time when supply chains are already fragile.
In Australia, Trump may also unwittingly save left-leaning Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
Australia's electoral landscape has been increasingly volatile. Years of high immigration, soaring property prices, energy shortages, and voter frustration over stagnant wages created an electorate hungry for change. Albanese's Labor Party struggled under the weight of unmet expectations, while Peter Dutton's conservative Liberal Party campaigned hard on restoring "Australian values," border security, and tax cuts, positioning themselves for a potential comeback. It was the dog-whistle of a Down Under brand of Trumpism, and it might have worked quite well in the May 3 federal election.
But Trump's disruption of the Western alliance, his appeasement of autocrats, and his abandonment of global stability have made the world a far scarier place. Dutton's hardline rhetoric, including sympathy for Trump's style of politics and calls for closer ties with like-minded nationalist leaders, has unnerved moderate voters. Albanese, though battered, benefits from seeming the safer, steadier choice in a time of upheaval.
Australia, in normal times, is one of America's most critical allies—a linchpin of U.S. strategy in the Indo-Pacific and a founding member of the AUKUS security pact. A Dutton victory would have installed a Trump-friendly government in Canberra at a time when Trump is clashing with traditional allies. In global terms, a fellow NATO skeptic in charge of Australia would have been a potent asset for Trump's worldview.
Instead, Trump has made competence seem precious—and that may save Labor's hold on power. An Albanese win would mean continued Australian support for Western alliances and climate initiatives—and deny Trump a major ideological ally in the Asia-Pacific. Essentially, Australia would be allied with Europe.
Romania, meanwhile, has become the front line in the battle for real democracy.
Here the stakes are existential. I covered the country as a young reporter for AP during its early transition to democracy. The collapse of the communist regime had left behind unimaginable wreckage: the economy was dead, corruption was everywhere, people's spirits had been utterly crushed. Romania's realignment with the Western order that seems to mean nothing to Trump was very personal.
Subsequent events make Romania's May 4 presidential election even more consequential. Romania is a key NATO member through which aid to Kyiv transits. A massive Russian effort to interfere there prompted authorities to cancel November's first round of voting, in which a pro-Kremlin candidate ended up in first place with about a fifth of the vote.
Trump's allies—shockingly pro-Kremlin themselves—cried foul, framing Romania's actions as an attack on free speech. The populist, pro-Putin far right may gain a third of the vote or so, as pro-Kremlin nostalgists and the Putin-Trump social media machine whip up a genuine storm. But that branch of local politics is now being pushed back upon by a coalition of democratic forces, center-left and center-right alike, much as happened in France.
Once again, Trump's attacks polarized the political landscape—but in doing so, they provoked the very unity needed to defend this important mid-sized democracy, situated in one of the world's most combustible tinderboxes, against creeping authoritarianism.
All of this points to a deeper truth. Trump fundamentally rejects the postwar consensus that sought to create a cooperative, rules-based international order. Gone is the old calculus of whether a country was "pro-Western." Gone is talk of promoting democracy, or even free markets—bedrocks of bipartisan foreign policy since World War II.
It is hard to overstate how shocking it is to the world that America could have chosen to attack the world order it has led this way. Other countries tend to like institutions and alliances like the UN, NATO, the European Union, the Paris climate accord, the International Criminal Court, and trade agreements like NAFTA. Trump hates them, because in his mind there are no allies—only competitors to dominate, or be dominated by.
Trump may exhibit the emotional range and speaking level of a petulant teenager, but it's clear by now that he has a real philosophy: one that follows a brutal, Hobbesian logic that can bring terrible consequences.
I don't think most Americans want this philosophy, but we are stuck with it for now. Trump believes that might makes right, that weakness deserves contempt, and that fairness is irrelevant. That is why he thinks it is reasonable to bully America's local NATO ally Denmark into surrendering Greenland, to demand that our friend Panama hand back the canal that is its lifeblood, to ridicule Canada (perhaps the best neighbor any country could hope for), and even to blame Ukraine for trying to resist the Russian invasion. In Trump's world, weaker, smaller Ukraine is to blame for not rolling over when a bully comes.
Trump's influence is everywhere, but, as we see in these three elections, not in the way he might have wanted. America's ability to get what it wants might be restored—maybe—when it elects a smarter leadership: One aware that strength means not the right to dominate but the responsibility to lead.
Dan Perry is the former Cairo-based Middle East editor and London-based Europe/Africa editor of the Associated Press, the former chairman of the Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem, and the author of two books. Follow him at danperry.substack.com.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
