Leaders of foreign governments and major parties responded on Tuesday night after Democrats won control of both the US Senate and the House.
Spain’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said American society had voted against policies that only make people poorer, and against hate, sexism, climate denial and elite privilege. He compared the result with the October re-election of Brazil’s socialist incumbent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and said the same shift would come soon in Spain. Sánchez said the far-right wave that his rivals Alberto Núñez Feijóo and Santiago Abascal were trying to ride was no longer growing and was crumbling.
South African president Cyril Ramaphosa, whose relationship with President Donald Trump has been combative, hoped the midterms would improve ties. The vote came days after the United States ended South Africa’s duty-free access to its market. Speaking to reporters after voting in municipal elections in Johannesburg, he said Democrats had taken the Senate and the House, that Americans had spoken, and that the change could open a new era in world relations because of the size and influence of the US economy. He said South Africa was willing to have good relations and hoped for a bilateral meeting of minds on geopolitics, trade and investment.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he hoped the midterm result would not hinder Trump’s mediation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. He noted that Trump remains in office and said Russia sincerely hoped he would continue peacemaking efforts. Peskov said developments were under way, another round of trilateral talks would be held very soon, and that Melania Trump’s humanitarian peacemaking efforts had been successful. Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov was less optimistic, saying the activist wing of the Democratic Party’s approach to Russia was extremely negative and that there was nothing new in that. He said Russian foreign policy was not based on short-term considerations and did not depend on political fluctuations in other countries.
European leaders generally expected the Democrat victory to pull the Trump administration closer to Europe’s positions, especially on Ukraine. Norwegian prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre said voices were emerging in American politics that were closer to Europe than the president and the administration had been on climate and the environment, foreign policy and development aid. French finance minister Roland Lescure said Trump either rises above the fray, accepts that changes are necessary, particularly on gasoline prices, and tones down his international involvement, or he does not. Belgian defence minister Theo Francken worried that governing in the United States would be almost impossible in the coming years because of internal division and polarised centres of power. He said he was watching import tariffs, support for Ukraine and NATO 3.0, and that policy on the Middle East would depend on government formation in Israel.
British prime minister Andy Burnham said the world now had a chance to unite around the cost of living. He said he could not bring down those pressures until the conflict in the Middle East was resolved and until the conflict in Ukraine started by Russia was addressed, and that those were the issues to focus on now.
German chancellor Friedrich Merz doubted that Trump would change course much after his party’s defeat, noting that for the past two years Trump had largely governed without consulting Congress. Matteo Salvini, a member of Italy’s governing coalition, said the American result was shaped above all by the wars, international tensions and the rise in the cost of living, whose consequences fall directly on families, and hoped the vote would speed an end to the conflicts and a return to peace. He was among several right-wing European leaders who blamed the war in Iraq for the poor Republican showing. Alice Weidel of Germany’s AfD said Trump had promised voters he would not pursue an interventionist foreign policy and that the broken promise had come back to haunt the Republicans. Jordan Bardella, leader of France’s National Rally, said US intervention in Iran had strongly affected both the US and European economies. European Parliament vice-president Sophie Wilmes called the shift in Congress radical and hoped it would open a calmer, more constructive relationship with Europe, while noting that Trump keeps his powers and that there is room for doubt about a positive dynamic.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, negotiating the aftermath of his own difficult election, did not comment immediately on Trump’s political fortunes. Opposition leader Yair Golan said the Democrat victory showed how toxic Netanyahu had become. He warned that continued tenure for Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir could bring international sanctions, isolation and a clash with the United States, which he called Israel’s friend and most important ally. He contrasted what he called Netanyahu’s “Super Sparta” — boycotted, backward and isolated — with a strong, advanced, free and secure Israel.
Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning called the election a domestic affair that would not alter Beijing’s positions. She said China was ready to keep working with the United States on understandings reached by the two heads of state, to manage differences, expand cooperation and build a constructive relationship of strategic stability based on respect, fairness and reciprocity.