Donald Trump was supposed to destroy establishment centrists with an anti-woke global populist revolt. But his wild second presidency may be doing the opposite.
Many Western democracies are experiencing the same intractable political issues that lifted Trump to his stunning electoral comeback last year, including high prices, affordable housing crises and difficulties controlling their borders.
So not long ago, Trump’s 2024 blueprint looked like a roadmap for populists everywhere. But his power grabs, attacks on US allies and tariff wars have swiftly brewed resentment. Foreigners might be cynical about their own leaders, but many look at Americans and think, “We don’t want what you’ve got.”
That’s why Mark Carney is still prime minister of Canada.
The Liberals’ late sub-in is celebrating an astonishing election victory after pulling his party from 25 points behind in a couple of months. But he wouldn’t even be in politics if it weren’t for Trump, whose demands that Canada become the 51st US state and tariffs that could be existential for its economy doomed the opposition.
“The Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has echoed a lot of Trump’s language for years,” said Matthew Lebo, a political scientist at Western University, Ontario. “To sound Trumpy at a moment when all of Canada’s attention turns to Donald Trump and sees the damage of it – it was just awful timing for Poilievre.”
Trump might be the scourge of globalists. But you don’t get much more establishment than a prime minister who studied at Harvard and Oxford and ran two central banks. “Mark Carney just looked made for this moment,” Lebo said.
A comeback Down Under?
The next chance for an anti-Trump wave is in Australia, which holds a general election this weekend. Weeks ago, Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese seemed headed for defeat. But he’s surged in the polls amid fury among voters over US tariffs, and the opposition conservative coalition, led by Peter Dutton, another anti-woke culture warrior, has stalled.
It’s impossible to predict what voters might decide. But if Albanese’s once-unpopular government survives, Dutton will face the same questions about political positioning as Poilievre. (Impressions that Dutton is accident-prone solidified early in the campaign after he punted an Australian football at a cameraman’s head during a disastrous photo-op.)
Even leaders who aren’t facing elections have had to recalibrate to deal with Trump’s raucous second term. The US president is deeply disliked abroad, and his bombast and insults have fostered anti-Americanism that creates dilemmas for leaders who must deal with him.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, for instance, struggled for traction after his landslide election victory last year. But his approval spiked over his unflappable dealings with the Trump and support for Ukraine as the US began to turn its back. Still, Starmer’s greatest test lies ahead, with the president’s state visit with King Charles III looming – an act of flattery by pageantry that many Britons oppose.
French President Emmanuel Macron has been struggling almost since his reelection win and was instrumental in the collapse of his own government after disastrously calling National Assembly elections last year. But suddenly he looks prescient. He’s been warning for years that Europe needs to take care of its own defense needs – and Trump’s attacks on allies have allowed him to relaunch his perennial unofficial campaign to be the EU’s indispensable leader.
Germany’s elections earlier this year seemed to buck the trend, since the far-right populist AfD party doubled its vote share after being openly backed by Vice President JD Vance and Elon Musk. Still, some analysts believe that alarm among voters about a US-style right-wing tide put a ceiling on the AfD’s rise.
Elsewhere in Europe, Trump’s “America first” attitude has changed the game for right-wing parties that look to him for inspiration. Anger over tariffs could blunt far-right leader Marine Le Pen’s bid to use Trump-style tactics to brand her conviction for embezzlement as election meddling ahead of France’s 2027 presidential vote.
Even Brexit architect Nigel Farage, who critics accuse of spending more time at Mar-a-Lago than with his constituency in a faded English seaside town, distanced himself from Trump’s Ukraine policy. And in Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, whose anti-democratic playbook made him a MAGA hero, is increasingly unpopular ahead of elections next year.
Populists aren’t on the retreat everywhere. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who won office on Trump-style immigration policies, remains popular and is promoting herself as a bridge between her friend in the Oval Office and Europe. She pulled off a consummate balancing act during a Washington visit this month.
How tariff wars will shape elections in Asia
More broadly, Trump’s sudden political earthquakes are looming over other campaigns. Both South Korea and Japan have key elections this year that will be shaped by the trade wars. Leaders of both US allies are under pressure to do quick deals to mitigate economic damage that could hurt their voters.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Tuesday rejected the idea that Japan’s general election in July and South Korea’s presidential vote in June will clog up talks on trade deals Trump needs to show his strategy is working.
“I think from our talks that these governments actually want to have the framework of a trade deal done before they go into elections to show that they have successfully negotiated with the United States,” Bessent said.
“So we are finding that they are actually much more keen to come to the table, get this done, and then go home and campaign on it.”
That’s one way of looking at it. But trade deals involve painful compromises that can alienate key voting blocs – hardly what politicians need before tough elections. This could also limit the scope of agreements that Trump insists will include spectacular concessions to the US.
Carney’s biggest test is ahead
Carney knows what got him elected. And he’s not letting up.
“America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country,” he warned. “But these are not idle threats. President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us. That will never, that will never ever happen.”
His crowd cheered. But his words pose a question that applies not just to Canada but to other foreign democracies. Will an anti-Trump message work as long as the 47th president stays in the White House?
It might, since there’s no sign Trump will tone down his act. But the world is full of disgruntled electorates and the West has deep political problems. In fact, voters repeatedly send clear messages that they want change, but their new governments often struggle to deliver. And big political wins can quickly fade under the weight of intractable issues – just ask Starmer.
The heat on Carney to deliver is immense.
He must defuse the trade war with Trump, which threatens to cause an economic crisis and destroy millions of Canadian jobs. He must find new markets and revenues for his country now that the US is no longer a reliable partner. And he’s under pressure to finally get Canada up to NATO spending minimums.
And voters will sooner or later demand progress on other issues – health care, housing, high prices, homelessness, substance abuse and unemployment. And the prime minister doesn’t have much room to maneuver.
Voters might have picked him as the best bet to stand up to Trump. But they didn’t hand him a wide mandate, saddling him instead with a minority government. He’ll need smaller parties to pass legislation that could entail tough political choices. This is an inherently unstable situation in which to build trust and a record that could convince voters in a few years to hand him a majority.
And while they were stung by defeat, Conservatives weren’t wiped out. Their promises to fight crime and lower taxes resonated with some voters, and they may fancy their chances of winning in a few years – perhaps under a new leader like Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who’s a populist himself but made the wise choice to confront Trump rather than trying to emulate him.
Carney’s Liberals understand they need to demonstrate change. They appeased angry voters by brutally ditching unpopular Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in a desperate Hail Mary to keep power. They picked a non-politician in Carney to lead them. And as soon as he was interim leader, he jettisoned Trudeau’s most unpopular positions, including a carbon tax. This removed one of Poilievre’s best arguments.
But in an era of grumpy voters and leaders struggling to deliver, even big electoral wins don’t guarantee success.
America, after all, is experiencing its third straight one-term presidency – assuming Trump obeys the Constitution and goes home in January 2029. And after snapping up all the swing states last year, Trump has the worst polling numbers of any president at the 100-day mark in decades.
And politics is never static. Starmer’s Labour Party landslide last year will count for nothing on Thursday, when Farage’s far-right Reform Party is expected to claim huge wins in local elections that could portend its eclipse of Britain’s most successful election machine, the Conservative Party, in the next general election.
Is it too soon to predict a populist revival?
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