World watches U.S. midterms with Trumpism already waning globally

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a Republican campaign event in Daytona Beach, Florida on Friday. | Doug Mills / The New York Times

Nov 1, 2026

U.S. elections from Alaska to Maine will reverberate globally next week, as midterm voting promises to diminish a president who has strong-armed the world.

With polls suggesting Donald Trump’s Republican Party will lose control of at least one house of Congress, conventional political wisdom would dictate that the 80-year-old leader emerges a lame duck, his predilection for deploying trade tariffs and U.S. military power curbed.

That might not transpire, given this is Trump. Heading into the final two years of his term, the U.S. president may instead take electoral defeat at home as a cue to step up his interventions abroad, renewing his attacks on Iran, attempting to force Ukraine to bow to Russian demands, or revisiting global tariffs.

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