World leaders who have clashed with President Donald Trump greeted the Republican rout in the US midterm elections with relief mixed with caution, hoping for a less combative American foreign policy.
That hope came with the expectation that voters' rebuke would not necessarily end the US conflict with Iran or alter Trump's tariffs or his lukewarm-at-best support for Ukraine and European allies.
British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said he hoped the results would focus minds in Washington and other capitals on ending the Iran war, which has sent fuel prices soaring. Speaking during a visit to the Commonwealth summit in Antigua, he said the world had an opportunity to unite around the cost of living, adding: "But I can't get people's cost of living pressures down until the conflict in the Middle East is resolved." He also pointed to "the conflict in Ukraine started by Russia" as something governments now had to focus on.
Laurel Rapp, director of the US and North America programme at the Chatham House think tank, said there would not be a moment in which the United States simply returned to its old relationship with Europe. She said she did not expect the result to significantly change the administration's transactional approach, which she described as deeply sceptical of Europe's value in a defence relationship. She added that Congress would find it easier to constrain Trump at home than in foreign policy, where he retains wide latitude.
Others in Europe warned that, with Trump in office for two more years, there would be no quick change to a foreign policy that has strained defence, economic and diplomatic alliances. The president has berated European leaders over immigration and wind farms, unsettled their economies with tariffs, threatened to pull the United States out of NATO and expressed a desire to take over Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark.
Austrian Foreign Minister Beate Meinl-Reisinger said that, independently of the election outcome, security and prosperity in Austria and Europe must not depend on how people in Kansas or Iowa vote, which is why Europe is strengthening its own defence and competitiveness.
Progressive politicians cast the results as part of a wider liberal comeback after recent defeats for populists on the right in Hungary, Brazil and Serbia. Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez wrote on X that Americans had voted "Against hate. Against machismo. Against climate denialism and against the privileges of the elites." He added: "It happened in Brazil. It just happened in the US. And it will happen soon in Spain," ahead of an election on 29 November.
Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said a majority of Americans had sent a clear message that "they have had enough of MAGA and now want a different course. Enough of polarization."
Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum said, "We must wait and see." Canadian Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc said it was unclear whether the result would strengthen Canada's hand in talks to end its trade dispute, noting that the new Congress would not take office until January. Ontario Premier Doug Ford, whose province has been hit by US tariffs on automobiles and steel, called the Democratic victory a win for Canada and the world and said it gave the country "a little more leverage."
The administration has pressed Ukraine to end the war Russia began with its full-scale invasion in 2022. Ukraine has accused Washington of delaying vital interceptor missiles and reported that a temporary disruption to Starlink and Starshield satellite internet hindered defence against Russian attacks. Last month, even while insulting President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump waived sanctions on Russia that Congress had overwhelmingly approved. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia hoped Trump "will continue his peacemaking efforts" regardless of the election.
German lawmaker Jürgen Hardt, foreign policy spokesperson for Chancellor Friedrich Merz's centre-right bloc, told ARD he hoped Republicans would read the result partly as a verdict on a "wrong foreign policy" and that Trump would "exercise more reason." South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, a target of Trump's baseless claims that his government discriminates against the white minority, said Democratic control of both houses of Congress would "introduce a new era in world relations."