The Trump factor shapes global policy, an election at the same time – but not necessarily to the president’s taste.
During major votes in Canada and Australia in the past two weeks, centrists have seen their fortune relaunch, while the parties who had borrowed from Manuel Maga lost.
President Trump has returned to power for only three months, but already his policies, including imposing prices and overwhelming alliances, have already struck national political battles around the world.
Although it is too early to say that anti-Trump forces are on the global scale, it is clear that voters have Mr. Trump somewhere in their minds when they make decisions.
Political cousins
Canada and Australia share a lot in common: a political system, a major mining industry, a sovereign to King Charles. Now they also share a remarkable political history.
In both countries, before Mr. Trump was inaugurated, the parties in the center-left had been in bad shape and seemed ready to lose power. The overlaps of polls were the conservative parties, whose leaders flirted with Trumpian politics both in style and in substance.
In the weeks following the return of Mr. Trump to power, the Canadian and Australian political scenarios changed in the same way: the holders of the center-left jumped in front of conservative oppositions and won. And the conservative leaders of the two countries have lost not only the elections – they even lost their own seats in Parliament.
Prime Minister of Canada Mark Carney campaigned on an explicitly anti-Trump message, putting the threats of the American president in Canada in the heart of his campaign. The leader of Australia, Anthony Albanese, did not do so. But the two men obtained an anti-Trump bump.
Conservative leaders faced a scathing rejection in the polls. Pierre Poilievre, chief of the Canadian Conservatives, and Peter Dutton, the chief of those in Australia, had trouble shaking a harmful association with Mr. Trump.
Mr. Dutton had returned or moderate certain Trumpian policy proposals when they proved to be unpopular, such as the radical reduction in the workforce in the public sector. Mr. Hairyis has never really far from the Trump approach, even after the American president threatened Canada’s sovereignty.
Charles Edel, president of Australia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a reflection group, described the elections in Australia as “its eruption”. And he suggested that it had resulted, at least in part, due to Mr. Trump’s implicit intrusion into the elections, even if she had been mainly focused on domestic issues.
“There were enough similarities with the Canadian elections to suggest that conservative fortune fell as Trump’s prices and attacks on the American allies have accelerated,” he wrote in an email.
In Canada, some saw the result of the Australian elections as a sign of solidarity of their cousins in the far south. “Albo Up!” An online even said, exchanging the nickname of Mr. Albanese in the anti-Trump slogan inspired by Mr. Carney’s hockey: “The elbows!”
Flight to security
Carney benefited from a perception of voters that it would be a stable hand to manage Mr. Trump and his unpredictable impact on the economy of Canada, which is deeply integrated into America and already injured due to prices and uncertainty. Its history as economic decision -makers have also worked in its favor.
All over the world, in Singapore, the argument of stability during periods of trouble also seemed to help the action party of the outgoing people.
Last month, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong told Parliament that Singapore would support greater success of the new American tariffs because of his dependence on world trade. He called on Singaporeans to prepare more shocks and predicted slower growth.
Like Mr. Carney, who declared the old relationship between Canada and the United States, Wong issued a dark warning before the elections. “The global conditions that have enabled Singapore’s success in recent decades can no longer hold,” he said.
On Saturday, voters returned to power, a result which has never been in doubt but which has always been considered reinforced by the “flight to security” strategy that the party has deployed.
“This is another case of the Trump effect,” said Cherian George, who wrote books on Singaporean politics. “The feeling of a deep concern about Trump’s trade wars is to conduct a decisive number of voters to show strong support for the holder.”
Mixed impact
In Germany, an important Western ally which was the first to hold a national election after the inauguration of Mr. Trump, the effect of the factor Trump was less direct, but it has always been felt.
Friedrich Merz, who will be sworn in as a new German Chancellor on Tuesday, did not benefit from the election of Mr. Trump as the leaders in Canada or Australia have done so in the most recent votes.
But if Mr. Trump’s confrontation with the European Allies in Defense and Trade did not help Mr. Merz before the vote, that has helped him since.
Mr. Merz was able to pass through a suspension of expenditure limits in the fiscally austere of Germany, which will facilitate his work as a chancellor. He did so by arguing that the old certainties concerning the American commitment to the mutual defense had disappeared.
“Do you seriously believe that an American government will agree to continue NATO as before?” He asked the legislators in March.
The embracing of Maga-Phere of a German party from the far right known as the AFD did not help it, according to the polls, even if Elon Musk had gone so far as to approve the party and appear to one of its events by video.
A British exception
An unpredictable American president can have unpredictable consequences for leaders abroad, because Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Great Britain is to be discovered quickly.
Starmer, a center-left manager who won his elections before Mr. Trump won his praise for the commercial manner with which he treated the new American president.
Unlike Mr. Carney, Mr. Starmer put himself in four to avoid the direct criticism of Mr. Trump, finding a common cause with him as much as possible and seeking to avoid a break. After a visit to the White House which was deemed successful, even some of Mr. Starmer’s political opponents seemed impressed.
During all this time, an ally of Trump in Great Britain, Nigel Farage, chief of the reform of the anti-immigration party in the United Kingdom, had trouble preventing the accusations which he sympathizes with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
But Mr. Starmer quickly lacked steam after failing to bring back a pleasant visit to the White House in the exemptions from American prices on British products.
Last week, his Labor Party was brought to a blow when the vote took place during the regional elections and others in certain parts of England. He lost 187 seats on the board as well as a special parliamentary election in one of his bastions.
On the other hand, Mr. Farage’s party achieved spectacular success, not only by winning this special election, but taking two mayors and making radical gains. For the first time, his party won control over the lowest levels of the government in several parts of the country.
Victoria Kim Reports contributed to Sydney; Sui-the weekend de Singapore; Christopher F. Schuetze from Berlin; And Stephen castle from London.
