Trumpian chaos has dealt another blow to Ukraine.
The American president said that he would end the Ukraine war in 24 hours. He would bring peace to the region even before he was inaugurated.
Trump had a special bond with Vladimir Putin. The two men had chemistry and he could use it to the end war.
Zelensky meanwhile was a “dictator”. Ukraine started the war. Zelensky needed to sign over his country’s mineral rights to pay an inflated price for past help.
And then, Putin isacting unreasonably. He is sending in missiles and killing children when there is supposed to be a limited ceasefire. The Russian leader is stalling.
Then finally, on Friday—exactly one month after US and Russian teams gathered in Riyadh, Secretary of State Marco Rubio tells his European counterparts that Donald Trump has decided that talks are taking too long and he is considering pulling out of the negotiations that he initiated.
Ukraine is just another example of chaotically disjointed governance which is leaving the world’s leaders standing around scratching their heads in Trump’s destructive wake
Tariff Hokey Cokey
Liberation Day, tariffs on everything and everyone except Russia, Belarus and North Korea. No, tariffs off. No, tariffs still on China. No, tariffs off some goods from China.
America is committed to NATO, says Rubio. No, NATO is full of freeloading Europeans and we should exit the alliance as quickly as possible, says Vice President JD Vance.
Trump’s anti-woke ideology harnessed to his 19th century economic policies, short-termism and demand for instant solutions to complex problems has created a crisis of confidence in America and its position in the world. It has also created a vacuum for China to step into.
China traces its civilisation back nearly 5,000 years. The United States will next year celebrate its 250th birthday.
Short term planning for China is a decade. Long term is… well, forever.
Short-term planning for the United States is until the next mid-term congressional elections held every two years. Long-term is the presidential elections every four years.
Governments in China stay in power until the “Mandate of Heaven” falls from their shoulders. American governments last four, maybe eight years if they are lucky.
Chinese people have no experience of democracy. Like their governments they live in the present and think not of tomorrow but of a future well beyond tomorrow. They are the standard bearers of an ancient well-ordered and established civilisation
American people think of themselves as the standard bearers of democracy. Their society is thrusting, fast-moving, exciting and constantly changing at a sometimes exhausting pace.
Which of these two countries is best equipped to deal with the economic hardships that Donald Trump is inflicting on both of them?
A rock and a hard place
Britain is stuck between a rock and a geopolitical hard place. Since leaving the EU in 2016 it has suffered low growth, a drop in living standards and an even further drop in its international standing.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has promised economic growth. With growth will come higher tax revenues, lower borrowings and more money for defense and the NHS.
But from where will the growth come? Certainly not Europe with its ten percent tariff and mountains of bureaucratic red tape.
According to US Vice President the US cavalry is about to come galloping across the Atlantic to save Britain with a great trade deal. It seems that President Trump loves Britain. Loves the Royal Family and loves the idea of lifting Britain out of the economic doldrums.
Very tempting. And it is made more so by the existing “Special Relationship”-type connections and the Sir Keir’s belief that Britain can continue to carve out a role as bridge between Europe and America. And possibly—as Trump drives the US further and further into isolationism—between the world and America.
But there are problems with this strategy. To start with Trump is at best a one-term president (unless Trump can find a way around the constitutional prohibition of a third term) and the Democrats have shown little appetite for a US-UK trade agreement.
In fact, he may not make it to the end of his second term. In less than three months, President Donald J. Trump has set new records in plummeting approval ratings. According to an Economist/YouGov poll published this week, Trump’s approval rating has fallen to minus seven.
At the moment his slim majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives is preventing the Democrats from acting as an effective opposition. But if the latest polls are reflected in the mid-term elections in 19 months, Trump will find it impossible to continue to rule by decree. And, if he continues down the autocratic path, the Democrats may even win a two-thirds majority in the Senate and Trump would again face impeachment.
But there is another reason that a trade deal with the Trump Administration could be a Faustian Pact. It is that being friends with Donald Trump is more dangerous than being his enemy.
He has proven time and time again that he uses friendship as a lever to extract concessions. He does this simply by threatening to withdraw the advantages that his friendship has bestowed. Strike an advantageous deal with Donald Trump. Become dependent on that deal and Trump demands more and more and more and threatens to end the deal unless you bend the knee and deliver..
* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and author of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “America Made in Britain".
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14 Comments
‘Since leaving the EU in 2016 it has suffered low growth, a drop in living standards and an even further drop in its international standing’
Those towns that voted heavily to leave were hardly living it up when in the EU. Membership was an irrelevance to them hence the dismal election turnouts once every 5 years. Looking at the EU economic outlook – it’s hardly inspiring.
UK sitting on the fence looking both ways? Is there a chance we can go it alone and make trade deals with any country that is interested? We need to develop our own industrial base to achieve independence.
Trump being played by Putin. Trump ending the war in a day, arrogance, Trump not getting involved in any wars!? Is that his guilt feelings re his draft dodging past? I have read that the interlocutors used in the conversations with Trump and Putin in different ways leading to confusion in understanding of what is said and its meaning. Interpretation is, as said in my 1st sentence,what is happening
Might part of the “Special Relationship” be that both nations share having extreme differences of wealth distribution?
Might this suit their leaders?
In America,as of this past December the richest 0’00001% held $3.1 trillion of the country’s $146 trillion total household wealth” {From article below]
“The UK’s wealth inequality is much more than income inequality, with the top fifth taking 36% of the country’s income and 63% of the country’s wealth while the bottom fifth have only 8% of the income and only 0.5% of the wealth.” (From article below)
https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/04/18/oligarchy-has-arrived-in-america/
https://equalitytrust.org.uk/scale-economic-inequality-uk/
“We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.” [Former Supreme Court jurist Louis Brandeis]
Sorry to disappoint people but the Democrats are not going to win a 2/3 majority in the senate in 2026. They currently have 45 seats out of 100, plus there are 2 independents who usually caucus with the Democrats, making 47. So the Democrats would need to gain another 20 seats to get a 2/3 majority. In 2026, 35 seats are up for election (33 in the normal cycle plus special elections in Florida and Ohio). Of those seats the Democrats hold 13 and the Republicans 22. It’s just not plausible that the Democrats would win 20 out of 22 Republican seats. It’s perhaps more realistic that to hope that the Democrats would take the Senate with a small majority – which only requires them to take 4 Republican seats while not losing any of their own. And probably not unrealistic to hope that the Democrats also retake that house. If those things happen then it will become a lot harder for Trump.
@Simon R
Good analysis. And, as you say, it is realistic that the Democrats could retake the House next year and gain a slim majority in the Senate. That would be enough for the Democrats to be able to block judicial nominations, including to the Supreme Court if any Justice dies or resigns, as well as taking back control over the Federal Budget.
Since 2026 is a mid-term election, the key issue will be whether Democrats or Republicans will be more able to motivate their voters to turn up at the polls.
The invasion of Ukraine destroyed the post-war rules based international order established with the creation of the United Nations. Trump’s Tariff policy has upended the rules based order for International trade established with the GAAT in 1947 and superceded by the WTO in 1995.
The USA has for decades been consuming more than it produces and is reliant on the continuing infusion of foreign capital to maintain its rate of consumption. A large proportion of US public and corporate debt, stock market, real estate and farmland is owned by overseas investors. It is running deficits of 7% of GDP at full employment and is planning for further major tax cuts.
The need to refinance $7 trillion of US debt this year is causing a great deal of uncertainity with respect to the stability of the US dollar and the outlook for inflation The $7 Trillion U.S. Debt Refinancing Challenge
None of this bodes well for Ukraine’s struggle or the UK’s economic outlook which has similar problems to that of the USA. The US democrat party polling is as bad as the Labour party here Democratic Leaders Get Worst Polling Result in Over Two Decades
It seems the all that can be expected in the US is a return to a polarized stand-off between Congress and the executive in 2026 together with major new rounds of quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve (to refinance US debt and finance $2tillion+ deficits) that may ultimately topple the US dollar as the International reserve currency and safe haven asset.
Predicting the 2026 congress results in 2025 is a mugs game. Can the demoralised Democrats really pull together a national campaign against The Donald? What is the President going to try and do between now and then? If you had been asked in April 2023 to predict the no of LibDem seats in 2024, would you have got it anywhere near correct?
If all anti Trump voters rally behind the Democrats who knows what could be achieved? My advice is don’t speculate. We no longer live in ordinary times. Massive Democrat gains in the Senate seem a big ask, but so was 72 LibDem MPs
Pointless trying to plan for Trumps next moves.
Start to build , with the EU and the Commonwealth, a new consensus and a platform that will attract other nations and grow to replace the USA as the leading democratic base.
Mid Terms? Deal with them when they happen.
While commentators might love to dissect the latest twists in geopolitics, they should not forget that we face at least one existential challenge that threatens to make all the words irrelevant. Whether it is climate change or a new pandemic it is essential we remember we live on a fragile planet and it is only by working together that we have any chance of surviving as the dominant species.
Who is the leader or even potential leader of the Democrats? What prospect is there of their putting together an inspiring campaign? Is their only hope a fall-away of Trump support sufficient for people in desperation to vote for the only feasible alternative?
Dreadful performance by the Democrats.
Nobody at moment Denis. Those who talk about AOC or Newsom just goes to show how detached the Dem party is from reality.
They only have themselves to blame for the state their in. A 22 year old New Hampshire Democratic representative summed it up perfectly, in a grown up speech that put the party to shame.
It’s the big problem with the US political system that their parties don’t have political leaders until just before the presidential election when they emerge as last person standing from a brutal bout of blue on blue warfare in which they need to win a completely different electorate from that of the main contest.
ISTM that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is one of the few American politicians who are actively speaking out against Trump and his regime. Worth noting that AOC would probably be considered mainstream centre-left anywhere in Europe. She is considered far-left in the US only because their Overton window is so far to the right of that in most Western democracies.