In 100 days, Trump alienates close allies like Canada, lets Russia and China outflank him

Nothing could better sum up the impact of President Donald Trump’s first 100 days on foreign policy than the passionately anti-Trump statement of Canada’s newly elected prime minister early on Day 99.

“President Trump is trying to break us so America can own us,” Mark Carney, a renowned central banker and novice politician, told a cheering audience. “This will never happen.”

Carney’s Liberal Party had just pulled off a stunning upset over a pro-Trump conservative who had been up 20% in the polls until the president started a trade war against our closest neighbor — and began mouthing off about making Canada the 51st state.

“We are over the shock of American betrayal,” Carney continued. “But we will never forget the lessons.”

These bitter words from a NATO partner, with whom we share the longest land border between any two countries, capture the almost unimaginable feat Trump has pulled off in just 100 days: turning democratic allies, from Canada to Europe to Australia, into reluctant adversaries who distrust and fear the U.S. president. All while aiding our true adversaries, Russia and China, with policies that display weakness and incompetence, and undercut U.S. security at home and abroad.

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Most dangerous, Trump seems utterly clueless about the destruction he is wreaking on the nation and beyond. “I run the country and the world,” he bragged to the Atlantic in a king-like display of ego run wild. More accurately, he is running America and the world into economic chaos and the risk of more war.

Let’s start with Trump’s tariffs. No one disputes that China engages in unfair trade practices and that U.S. national security requires re-shoring some critical supply chains, including chip manufacturing and critical medicines.

But Trump’s willful ignorance of how tariffs work and his chaotic imposition of indiscriminately high tariffs across the globe are driving the world economy toward recession. Even though he has backtracked on some tariffs for 90 days, during which his minions claim he will sign 90 deals, there are no deals signed yet. This adds to the uncertainty that has tanked markets.

Even more disturbing, Trump seems oblivious to the fact that to curb China’s mercantilist behavior, he must work in close cooperation with our allies in Europe and Asia, who are also major trading partners with Beijing. Instead, he is alienating those allies by treating them with the same imperial disdain that has turned Canada from friend into foe.

Trump’s ego not only blinds him to the need for allies but has impelled him to risk an all-out trade war with China, which he is likely to lose unless he conducts an embarrassing retreat. The president mistakenly believed Xi Jinping would cave if he imposed 145% across-the-board tariffs on most Chinese imports. Trump said as much to the Wall Street Journal editorial board before the 2024 election, when he bragged that he could prevent Xi from invading Taiwan by threatening to impose tariffs of that size. He also claimed his relationship with Xi would help prevent any collision with Beijing.

So much for Trump’s blind ego (and God help Taiwan). China did retaliate in a tit-for-tat fashion, with 125% tariffs and a ban on U.S. access to critical earth minerals, along with stopping delivery of Boeing jets. Pending price hikes from tariffs have roiled U.S. and global markets, and will soon hit U.S. consumers.

Trump wants to partially climb down, but Beijing says he must drop all new tariffs before any trade negotiations. As the Journal editorial board proclaimed last week, the “harsh reality” is that “China called Mr. Trump’s bluff and seems to have won this round.”

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So, in 100 days, Xi has seen Trump’s egotistical weakness and has been able to humiliate him on the world stage. The humiliation continues, as Trump claims Xi called him and talks with China are on, while the Chinese foreign ministry retorted that this was untrue. “I would like to reiterate that China and the U.S. have not conducted consultations or negotiations on the tariffs issue, let alone reached any agreement,” a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson pointedly repeated this week.

Around the world, friends and foes are witnesses to Trump’s blindness, even if they are also leery of China. They see that he has rattled a healthy U.S. economy with his erratic behavior, while Beijing has been able to outmaneuver Washington.

And they also watch China ally Vladimir Putin play Trump mercilessly over Russia’s war on Ukraine.

It has been painful to watch over the past three months as Trump made concession after concession up front to the Kremlin, only to have Putin flatly reject the president’s requests for a 30-day ceasefire and continue bombing Ukrainian civilians. As Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, noted last week, Putin is “playing America as a patsy.”

This Putin playbook has become so obvious that even Trump wondered aloud last week whether “maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along.” But the president still refuses to carry through with his threatened secondary sanctions on Russian oil, or to send Kyiv more arms. He still appears on track to abandon Ukraine.

Indeed, with his threats to “take” Greenland and retake the Panama Canal, and his verbal assaults on Canadian sovereignty, he displays a stunning eagerness to imitate Putin’s imperial appetite to seize a neighbor’s land.

Thus, in his first 100 days, Trump has revealed something remarkable to the world, including to China, and to our NATO allies in Canada, Europe, Japan, and South Korea: Under his rule, the United States has undergone a sea change. Trump has apparently switched sides to stand with authoritarian Moscow and proved too erratic or arrogant to handle America’s chief rival, Beijing.

Moreover, Trump is steering the U.S. economy toward disaster and recklessly dragging our allies with him. At the same time, he has savaged America’s soft power abroad by eliminating foreign aid, along with medical and academic research that made the U.S. a model for the world.

Canada’s new premier has set the tone for a world in which America’s onetime allies must band together in resistance to Trump’s imperial dreams and his economic threats. It will be fascinating to watch whether a tough Carney can penetrate Trump’s egotistical bubble during the next 100 days and persuade him that the United States can’t afford to go it alone.