Why the world is haunted by this White House

By Max Hastings

Donald Trump is the 14th US president of my lifetime, and he claims a unique distinction. Through all the previous White House incumbencies, months went by when even educated, informed British, German, Indian, Brazilian, French or Australian people did not give a moment’s thought to America’s leader.

Sure, we noticed when a president visited our country or started a war or got impeached or had an incredibly beautiful wife who dressed wonderfully. We knew that the US was the richest and most influential nation on earth, and that on the big things we needed to play follow-my-leader. But even somebody like me, who lived in the US for a couple of years, and visited regularly until January 2025, did not lie awake nights wondering what our neighborhood superpower might do next.

Today, that has changed. We used to mock nervous nellies who went through life terrified that a plane might crash onto their house. Now, however, we know exactly how the plane-crash neurotics feel.

We are mesmerized, haunted, by everything Trump says and does, because nobody can predict his next mood swing. This delights the man himself. All he wants from life is unimaginable wealth and the rest of us bowing to his every whim. He is the Sun King, the epicenter of global attention, because he has shown the willingness as well as the power to make rain or shine in accordance with impulse.

Nobody should be allowed to pretend that this is normal. It is absolutely abnormal. It represents political climate change in some ways more bewildering than living on a planet that is getting hotter, because on some days our country — whichever that may be — finds itself microwaved by the White House, while on others it is suddenly exposed to permafrost.

The latest example is Trump’s announcement that the US will send new air-defense systems to Ukraine, purchased by NATO members, together with long-range missiles. This is unequivocally a good thing. Ukrainian city-dwellers have been enduring a nightly battering from Russian missiles and drones against which they have become almost defenseless, as the flow of US weapons has slowed.

The big question is how serious is the president’s change of heart after months of rubbishing Ukraine and its leader — and how long it will last. He himself says he is “disappointed” by Vladimir Putin, but “not done with him.” Since the inauguration, Russian oligarchs have been freer to do business in the US, and Washington agencies charged with monitoring their activities have been shut down.

Trump has renewed support for Ukraine mostly because he feels personally snubbed by Putin. If that changes, so once again could American policy.

Then there is the global economy. Some of the smartest economists say they are unsure whether US business can survive the roller-coaster ride launched by Trump, most conspicuously through tariffs, or whether the economy will tank. Willful uncertainty about the future of Jerome Powell and the Federal Reserve, with attacks renewed this week by Trump, further rocks confidence.

The respected Martin Wolf of the Financial Times is among those who characterize the Trump tariffs as “crazy,” an adjective he reprised this week. Mohamed El-Erian, formerly a Wall Street investment whiz and now a distinguished academic, is among those who admits that he has no idea how the Trump story will play out.

We should never underestimate America’s resilience and stupendous capacity for innovation. But he writes in the current Foreign Affairs that the only rational course for other nations is to build robust financial defenses and reduce their dependence on the US, while forging new relationships, because there is no early prospect, and perhaps no prospect even after Trump, that the US will resume its historic role as a reliable partner.

El-Erian warns both nations and corporations against what behavioral scientists call “active inertia” — “when actors recognize that they need to behave differently but end up sticking to familiar patterns and approaches regardless.”

The question almost every government in the world is asking itself is whether it dares to defy Trump. Two weeks ago, he warned Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva that he would impose 50 per cent tariffs on the country’s exports to the US unless criminal proceedings are dropped against former President Jair Bolsonaro, for his 2022 attempt to stage a coup, to retain power after losing the last election.

There is no pretense that this threat is linked to trade balances. It is merely a component in what we can call Trump’s dictator protection program. He was a warm supporter of Bolsonaro, widely considered an appalling as well as corrupt national leader. Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo has close personal relations with the Trump clan.

Lula responded with outrage to Trump’s threat, saying “no one is above the law.” His country’s exports to the US amount to only 2 per cent of its gross domestic product, but a 50 per cent tariff will undoubtedly cause disruption.

The European Union faces even more serious dilemmas in determining its response to lobbying by Trump, backed by tariff threats, on behalf of US Big Tech. There is an issue here that goes beyond mere commerce. The tech giants profit mightily from running almost open-house content policies, which some of us consider deeply corrupting, especially of the young.

Brussels has been striving to regulate social media, and to punish companies that spread anti-social material. But Trump is batting for the tech giants to enjoy free rein — “free speech” as he and his acolytes call it — and to be spared from EU retribution. So great is Europe’s fear of a wider trade war, that its regulators may yet bow to Washington. It is highly debatable whether the EU will risk deploying its Anti-Coercion Instrument against America, even though tariff blackmail offers an obvious justification for it.

Then there is Iran. Will the US attempt to parley with the mullahs about their nuclear program, or revert to bombing? My friends, including one very well-informed Israeli, say that Benjamin Netanyahu suckered Trump into joining his war; that the Iranians, though unquestionably a malign force, were not about to produce a nuclear weapon; and that force alone cannot resolve the problems and threats posed by Iranian regional aggression.

But whether Trump will fall out of love with Netanyahu as he now professes to have fallen out of love with Putin, we cannot tell. The president himself does not know what he might do, or not do, next Tuesday. It is the not knowing that scares the world so much — and which makes us talk about Donald Trump almost every day.