🌍 Did the midterms clip Trump abroad?

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— Did the midterms clip Trump abroad?
— A bank collapse rocks Paraguay
— How to disguise artillery in PNG

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~10%

That’s how far China’s marriage registrations declined in the first three quarters of the year, compared to 2025.

The Democrats are still riding the high of their seismic win in Tuesday’s midterms, while the Republicans, stunned, are penning op-eds to figure out what happened. 

And while we’re partial to a good post-mortem, we are at our core geopolitics nerds (with a penchant for 90s sitcoms), so let’s drill down a little more on the foreign policy side of things, starting with…

Please hear what we’re saying (rather than how it sounds) when we point out that a Democratic midterm wave was Tehran’s best-case scenario, for several reasons.

First, it validated Iran’s energy-squeeze strategy to impose political costs on Trump’s military move. With gas above $4 and diesel above $6, voters didn’t have much trouble drawing a link between Trump’s war and their eye-watering bills.

Second, the Dems campaigned on curbing Trump’s foreign adventurism, a promise repeated by (for example) senior senator Chuck Schumer: “We are going to end the war” (the Iran one, to be precise). 

Now as we’ve explored yesterday and in our special edition (become an Insider!), the US president retains near-total powers over US foreign policy, so the Democrats can’t realistically force him to sign a deal with Iran. What they can do, however, is cut the Pentagon’s purse-strings until Trump rethinks.

Third, while only 4% of voters listed foreign policy as their top priority, the Iran war itself remained deeply unpopular. Even before the first bombs dropped, a majority told pollsters they didn’t like the idea, but Trump rolled the dice both on a) a successful decapitation strike, and then b) voters warming to a win.

Instead, Trump’s own Veep is now tweeting, “The reason we lost is the war.” Of course, Vance has 2028 incentives to distance himself from an unpopular policy, and has presumably been the source of leaks suggesting he’s dissented along the way. But still, not a winning vibe when your own Veep publicly spells it all out.

Fourth, Israel has now become a ballot box issue in ways unthinkable a decade ago: 54% of folks now favour curbing US security assistance, while Vance himself cited internal polling listing “change our relationship to Israel” as a top-four reason to vote blue or just stay home. Hence Trump’s election-day move to phase aid out.

Now, none of this means the Dems are soft on Iran, nor that the war will end tomorrow. To the contrary, maybe a wounded Trump with less to lose will double down on ousting a weakened regime. But it’s equally possible the regime now concludes that the midterms just drew enough US political blood to encourage holding out a bit longer. 

Beijing probably now has mixed feelz: Trump will go down in history as the first president to abandon decades of fading US hopes that liberalising China’s economy would eventually liberalise China’s politics. Instead, the Party cashed all those checks while Xi kept warming his crown up for an unprecedented fourth term.

And yet… for all the chest-thumping, Trump 2.0 has now pivoted to stabilise US-China ties. History might show it’s just a tactical pause after China revealed the economic pain it could inflict in response to Trump’s 2025 tariffs; ie, perhaps Trump (or his successor) reverts to the mean once DC is no longer so beholden to China’s rare earths dominance (or ditto China to the USA’s chip controls).

But for now, Trump 2.0 keeps rolling over his manageable trade truce, showing flexibility over his chip controls, and has even made the occasional transactional noise about congressionally-entrenched US commitments to Taiwan.

Hence the mixed feels in Beijing: happy to see ties stabilised, US red lines wobbling, and a Trump 2.0 more chastened, gridlocked, and/or distracted. But probably also a little uneasy about what a semi-cornered Trump might do next, let alone who might replace him.

The Kremlin didn’t waste time hiding its disappointment over Trump’s loss, with deputy FM Ryabkov noting the Democratic Party’s stance on Russia remains “sharply negative” (polling suggests US folks might prefer the term “rational”).

But Putin won’t hit the panic button just yet, for two reasons:

But as always, some caveats: Congress already restricted the Pentagon’s ability to cut US forces in Europe (a Putin bugbear) below 76,000. Plus there’s always the chance a chastened Trump might become more cautious after taking an electoral L the size of Texas (literally), rather than keep pushing Ukraine to cede its territory.

We’ll get a key early signal later this month when Trump potentially sees Xi and Putin (but not Ukraine’s Zelensky) at China’s APEC summit. 

If you felt a massive shift in Atlantic air currents on Wednesday, that was Europe breathing a collective sigh of relief. The surprise isn’t that Brussels cheered (Trump 2.0 has loved a bit of euro-bashing) so much as the extent to which Trump’s own dented populist brand might now impact Europe’s own political spectrum.

Don’t believe us? Look at (say) how France’s right-populist Jordan Bardella (of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally) framed it all: "Donald Trump's second term differs quite significantly, in its philosophy and foreign policy, from his first."

He’s distancing himself from Trump in the same indirect way we’ve now seen from Vance (above) but also Cruz (Texas) and DeSantis (Florida).

But that doesn’t mean Europe’s centrists will now crack the celebratory Chouchenn. Trump is still Trump, and a US president is still the president. Just this week, his team has still been pushing Europe to tip more cash into PURL (footing the bill for US arms provided for Ukraine’s self-defence), while warning pharma might be next.

So while this president might be bloodied at the ballot box, the white-knuckle ride of US foreign policy continues.

If there’s one immediate, unifying silver lining from this midterms result, maybe it’s that…

If there’s one immediate, unifying silver lining from this midterms result, maybe it’s that it was at least clear, sparing the world’s democratic superpower another exhausting round of institution-bashing. And perhaps that good news for America also doubles as bad news for any foes feasting on the spectre of American paralysis.

But perhaps the fire has actually just shifted into each political party? When you’ve got GOP luminaries like Vance and Cruz (Texas) and DeSantis (Florida) penning what read like public burn-book entries before the last votes are even tallied, it suggests they really now see opportunity away from (rather than with) this president. The Trump fairy dust has lost its magic, so watch for how his lieutenants start shaping whatever follows MAGA.

Part of that process will depend on what happens within the opposition Dems, who likewise face their own sea of ambitious names but without any obvious frontrunner.

But assuming both parties like winning rather than losing, they’ll keep a closer eye on public sentiment, some of which we’ve explored above. But another intriguing source is Pew’s latest tracker on how folks view other world powers. And it turns out Americans still overwhelmingly dig their like-minded allies (Australia, Canada, Japan, Italy, UK) and even neighbours (Mexico gets more warmth than cold).

As for any others? The bottom three (within the G20) are China, Saudi Arabia, and Russia, all getting warmer Trump rhetoric than Canada lately.

Now to be clear, Americans tend not to vote on this stuff, and diplomacy is about more than a Pew popularity contest. But it’s hard to see the next batch of White House hopefuls campaigning on (say) bonhomie with Putin, nor dunking on Canada.

So then… what do Americans want America to be? We don’t see these midterms reflecting any kind of demand for retreat, nor a thirst for crusades. Rather, we think folks still ultimately want an America that’s globally engaged, just perhaps not so entangled.

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When is a highly-dangerous unexploded artillery shell not an artillery shell? When Beijing’s diplomats step in to clarify that it is, in fact, a bottle of vintage Cabernet.

We wish this were a joke, but there was indeed an awkward moment between Papua New Guinea and China after locals found a “Chinese military artillery shell” at a construction site in the capital of Port Moresby. Naturally every internet pundit started dusting off their PLA munitions guide to pinpoint the exact model of shell.

But not China’s embassy in Port Moresby. It issued a confident statement, we assume with a straight face, insisting the thing was actually just a discarded wine bottle, shaped like weaponry for novelty purposes! It also insisted China’s tightly regulated borders mean smuggling an actual military-grade weapon out would be virtually impossible, so chill everyone.

So… who’s telling the truth?

Well, rather than crack it open and enjoy the subtle undertones of explosive payload with, ohhhh distinct notes of military-grade shrapnel and limb-loss, the cops carefully reviewed the object to confirm it was indeed a 32kg (70lb) live, undetonated, 130mm Type 59 artillery projectile used by China’s military!

The cops have now arrested four citizens of China for allegedly importing the item (for reasons still unclear).

Yesterday’s poll: What do you think was the biggest factor in the midterm landslide?

💸 Cost of living (41%)
⚔️ Foreign wars (5%)
✊ Backlash against President Trump (53%)
✍️ Other (write in!) (1%)

Your two cents: