{"id":15647,"date":"2026-11-12T07:31:20","date_gmt":"2026-11-12T07:31:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/2026\/11\/12\/trump-to-flex-muscles-on-asia-tour-after-midterms-losses\/"},"modified":"2026-11-12T07:31:20","modified_gmt":"2026-11-12T07:31:20","slug":"trump-to-flex-muscles-on-asia-tour-after-midterms-losses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/2026\/11\/12\/trump-to-flex-muscles-on-asia-tour-after-midterms-losses\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump to flex muscles on Asia tour after midterms losses"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Trump<\/p>\n

After his party suffered a midterms hammering, President Donald Trump faces a new challenge: proving he is still the boss of US foreign policy on the global stage.<\/p>\n

With Trump politically hamstrung as he enters the remaining two-year \u2018lame duck\u2019 period of his White House tenure, world leaders may be quietly wondering how to leverage the new balance of power in Washington.<\/p>\n

The 80-year-old Republican heads to the ASEAN summit in the Philippines and APEC summit in China from a radically transformed and hostile political landscape at home after the Democrats seized both the House of Representatives and Senate.<\/p>\n

Constitutionally banned from seeking a third term in the 2028 presidential race, the unpredictable billionaire could be all the more inclined to focus his energy on the international stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter bad midterms, this is how presidents reset,\u201d Edgard Kagan, an expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) told a news briefing.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Iran, trade, China \u2013<\/h2>\n

That is especially true for Trump on his Asian tour, where he is unlikely to be pressed publicly on domestic politics.<\/p>\n

China has described the midterms as an \u201cinternal affair\u201d and said it is \u201cwilling to continue working\u201d with the United States after Republicans lost control of both chambers of Congress.<\/p>\n

But the power shift in Washington will still be on leaders\u2019 radars, said Joshua Kurlantzick, an expert in Southeast Asia and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn private, many (Asian) leaders are relieved,\u201d Kurlantzick wrote in an article this month.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Iran war has been particularly challenging for the United States\u2019 Asian partners and allies, and they hope that after the midterm results US President Donald Trump\u2019s decision-making on the issue will become more predictable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump has said several times since the midterms that renewed fighting between the United States and Iran is unlikely.<\/p>\n

A Democratic-controlled Congress could also take a tougher stance towards China, Kurlantzick added, backtracking on the Trump administration\u2019s \u201csoft approach\u201d to Beijing that has sparked unease among US allies in Asia.<\/p>\n

Leaders in the world\u2019s largest continent are also hoping to see Democrats push back on Trump\u2019s barrage of tariffs on trading partners, which have stung Asian economies heavily reliant on exports.<\/p>\n

Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries has urged Congress to reassert its authority over US trade policy.<\/p>\n

The Democrats will not get an easy ride in undoing Trump\u2019s policies, though.<\/p>\n

The president enjoys broad authority over trade and holds veto power over congressional legislation \u2014 which he has vowed to use.<\/p>\n

\u2013 High-profile meeting \u2013<\/h2>\n

Trump relishes dramatic gestures and foreign policy provides an ideal arena for high-profile meetings, such as with Chinese and Russian leaders Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n

Trump told reporters this week he expects to meet Xi and Putin at the APEC summit in Shenzhen, China scheduled for November 18-19.<\/p>\n

The president said \u201cdenuclearization\u201d and ending the war in Iran would be on the agenda.<\/p>\n

But the bigger goal for Trump may well be a single photo of himself standing with the two other leaders he views as his great power equals, said Kurt Campbell, chair of The Asia Group and a senior diplomat during the Biden administration.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think in many respects this could be \u2018the meeting is the message\u2019,\u201d Campbell said.<\/p>\n

Ukraine\u2019s President Volodymyr Zelensky, who watched in horror as the White House appeared to pivot towards Moscow this year, has warned against a \u201cYalta 2.0,\u201d referring to Western leaders dividing Europe with the Soviet Union in 1945.<\/p>\n

Victor Cha, president of geopolitics and foreign policy and Korea chair at CSIS, said the Republicans\u2019 midterm defeat meant a high-profile meeting was all the more likely.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne that he (Trump) has personally staked a lot of time over two terms has been on North Korea,\u201d Cha said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s nobody else in the US government that makes policy on North Korea except the president, so I think that he\u2019ll be focused on that sort of legacy issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

The post Trump to flex muscles on Asia tour after midterms losses<\/a> appeared first on Vanguard News<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Source: <\/p>\n

Vanguard News<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After his party suffered a midterms hammering, President Donald Trump faces a new challenge: proving he is still the boss of US foreign policy on the global stage. With Trump… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15648,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15647\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}