The setback for the Republicans marks the beginning to the end of a ten-year era of domestic political dominance for Donald Trump. But it is inevitable that a weakened Trump will also affect America's position in the world.
An immediate consequence will be that when Trump meets his Chinese and Russian colleagues Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin in November and December at the Apec summit in Shenzhen and the G20 meeting in Miami, he will come across as a lame duck. And he will remain so during the two years or so that he remains in the White House.
When Trump gave his last speech before Election Day, he said that America is in a golden era:
- We have a country that we can be proud of again. For four years (Joe Biden's presidency, DN's note) other leaders laughed at us, as if we were stupid. But they don't laugh anymore.
This self-righteous image runs counter to what is shown by a series of surveys, including the Pew Research Center and Gallup: The United States is viewed with skepticism and has very low trust in much of the world's democracies. Virtually all European government leaders see Trump as a destabilizing actor. No one trusts the US to be a reliable ally anymore.
The heavy election loss also confirms that a growing part of the US electorate - including many Republicans - considers Trump a disaster for the country. The list is long of the things that have eroded support for the Republican Party, and several are foreign policy-related: Trump's counterproductive trade war, the botched war in Iran, the unconditional support for Israel, the rampant corruption surrounding the White House, the betrayal of Ukraine, and the strange embrace of Vladimir Putin.
With his slogan "America First", Trump has often been called an isolationist. But it doesn't add up to all the foreign activities that - in addition to all the rebuilding projects in Washington DC - have characterized Trump's second presidency: the punitive tariffs, the gold-dealing with Putin, the war against Iran, the abduction of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and the threats against Greenland and Canada.
Several of these measures were direct causes of inflation being diluted and petrol and diesel prices skyrocketing. As usual, the economy topped American voters' list of important issues. But many could see the connection between Trump's foreign policy and their economic hardships.
How the election loss will affect Trump's foreign policy actions is too early to say. The fact that both chambers of Congress are controlled by the Democrats from January does not change the fact that it is the president who manages US foreign policy. As commander-in-chief, he also has the ability to station military forces wherever he wants, for example in the Persian Gulf area.
Most Americans support Ukraine's fight for survival and disapprove of Trump's rampant flirtation with Putin.
But the president cannot declare war without Congress giving the go-ahead. So far, Trump has not cared about that. Together with Israel, he has gone to war against Iran. But Congress has a very concrete means of power: the budget and the money. Congress can simply stop paying for the Iran war, which so far is estimated to have already cost US taxpayers the equivalent of nearly 400 billion kroner - an amount that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is accused of concealing.
To what extent it will affect the plans to resume the bombings against Iran will become clear in the near future. The outcome of the election showed in black and white how deeply unpopular the war in Iran is, especially as it violated Trump's old election promise not to engage in new wars.
It is also not obvious how the policy towards Russia and Ukraine will be affected by the election. Most Americans support Ukraine's fight for survival and disapprove of Trump's rampant flirtation with Putin. But Trump has clung so strongly to Putin's line, that it is Ukraine that must give up territories and sovereignty, that it is difficult to see how he will be able to change his mind. If so, the first thing he needs to do is fire friend Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner — both with murky business interests in Russia — from their posts as negotiators with Moscow.
It will be up to the hitherto passive Congress to push through a decision on tougher sanctions against Russia and to resume the suspended military aid to Ukraine. The election result gives the Congress a more pro-Ukrainian composition. But overcoming Trump's veto requires a decision that cuts across party lines.
