The world has passed peak Trump

At the United Nations General Assembly, US President Donald Trump delivered a victory speech. A decade after telling his supporters on the campaign trail that he would stack so many victories, “you may even get tired of winning”, he offered a list of successes, including the settlement of eight wars, action against “the bully of the Middle East” in Iran, a deal with Denmark on Greenland, and the arrest of “outlaw dictator” Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. To Trump’s credit, some of these wins are significant — a fragile but important peace in Gaza and a Venezuela that is slowly moving towards elections for the first time in more than ten years.  

But his victory speech also revealed something else: the growing limits of his power as he enters a lame duck stage of his presidency, experiences collapsing approval ratings, and interacts with leaders whose tenures will extend far beyond his own. Previously the most powerful, unpredictable force on the international stage, Trump has now passed the peak of his ability to disrupt the international order.

Trump’s waning influence

The evidence of Trump’s fading influence can be found across his top priorities: tariffs, the Iran War and immigration enforcement.  

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s use of emergency powers to institute tariffs in a 6-3 ruling. Even before that decision, Trump was confronted with the limits of his power in his brief trade war with China, when he tried to force China into concessions with a 145% tariff rate, before having to back down to avoid severe economic damage to the US economy as China responded with a 125% rate and a halt on critical mineral exports.

Now, Trump has not only moderated his policies on China, but he has almost entirely reversed his position, as shown in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent visit to Washington, in which Trump greeted Xi at the airport (the first time an American leader has offered such a greeting for a state visit since 1962) and offered to sell China weapons (in violation of US law). 

When Trump attempted to ratchet up trade pressure on Canada, Prime Minister Mark Carney responded with retaliatory tariffs and a new middle power strategy. Trump correctly read that he possessed economic leverage over Canada (with over 70% of Canadian exports going to the US), but he underestimated the power imbalance between himself, as an unpopular leader with only two years left in his term, and Carney, who over 60% of Canadians favour — a wave of support that will likely keep him in office for years to come. Now, Canada is thinking even bigger — forging a closer connection with the European Union and attempting to bring other countries, such as Australia and the UK, along with it. 

As a result, Iran’s strategy is to wait Trump out, hoping that the economic pressure of the closure of the strait and his fading political capital will eventually force him to offer greater concessions. While Trump has attempted to message that he will not back down — by threatening to “annihilate” the country, emphasising that a loss in the midterms will not alter his strategy, and dispatching new forces to the Middle East — Iran has not been convinced.

Sagging approval, dwindling allies

Domestically, Trump’s flagship immigration enforcement policies are facing pushback as well. Earlier this year, Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota sparked such a large scale of violence and unrest that “border czar” Tom Homan had to end the initiative. Now, House and Senate Republicans, many of whom are running for reelection this November and facing long odds as a result of Trump’s sagging approval ratings, are breaking from him. Even longtime Trump ally senator Jim Justice, considering a run for governor of West Virginia, is now arguing that the administration’s immigration policies are “doing something wrong”. 

Trump of course remains a consequential figure on the global stage — in charge of the world’s most powerful military and dynamic economy in a time of few global guardrails. But the gulf between his ambitions and capabilities is widening. As a result, the level of global risk associated with Trump is declining in all areas except for one: artificial intelligence (AI). 

AI is the unique exception in which Trump’s capacity to disrupt the global order is growing. His decision to rule out regulation on AI in order to “win” the AI race against China, despite the increasingly frequent safety incidents documented by companies like OpenAI and Anthropic — from attempts to develop bioweapons using AI to rogue government hacking sprees — creates a near certainty that an AI-fuelled crisis will eventually emerge. Such a crisis, like Trump’s actions on trade, Iran and immigration enforcement, will spiral in ways that are currently unforeseeable and further demonstrate the limits of his power in the final years of his presidency.

The article was distributed by the Eurasia Group.

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