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Overseas, Some React With Alarm to Trump’s ‘America First’ Pledge Leaders Abroad, Joyful or Wary, Face Uncertainty of Trump Era
(about 5 hours later)
HONG KONG — In the Philippines, nationalists rallied outside the United States Embassy in Manila, setting fire to an American flag with a picture of President Trump’s face. In China, state media highlighted the “violent” protests that accompanied his inauguration. MEXICO CITY — There was dismay in Britain, applause in Russia and silence in Japan. French populists found hope, Mexican leaders expressed concern and Germany’s vice chancellor offered an allusion to his country’s dark past.
In Germany, the vice chancellor warned of a “drastic radicalization” in American politics and said Berlin stood ready to fill the void left by an isolationist Washington. And in Britain, Prime Minister Theresa May said she would tell a skeptical Mr. Trump how important NATO and the European Union are for European and world stability. In his first speech as president of the United States, Donald J. Trump showed the world he could be as divisive abroad as he is at home. His vow to place America first — and his threat to upend longstanding alliances, trade deals and many other tenets of the liberal democratic order the nation has chosen for nearly 70 years — was received across the globe with fear, silence and glee, sometimes within the same country.
“With the threats we face, it’s not the time for less cooperation,” she told The Financial Times. Mrs. May is supposed to travel to Washington to meet Mr. Trump soon, perhaps as early as this week. In searching for a historical analogy, some in Britain reached back to the 1930s, when a bleaker vision of the world prevailed with America on the sidelines. China imposed unusually tight state control over coverage of the inaugural, though state media highlighted “violent” protests in the United States. In the Philippines, nationalists set fire to an effigy of Mr. Trump, while the country’s president welcomed his American counterpart’s apparent willingness to stop telling other leaders how to govern.
In countries around the world, small demonstrations and alarmed reactions greeted Mr. Trump’s ascent to power and his inaugural pledge: “From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first.” But some world leaders embraced the new reality, seeking to accommodate a galvanizing political force whose message has been echoed in mass movements across continents. Nationalist movements embraced Mr. Trump’s words as a validation. The far-right French politician Marine Le Pen, a serious candidate in presidential elections this spring, declared that Mr. Trump’s victory had opened “a new era in the cooperation between nations.”
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, who was the first world leader to meet with Mr. Trump after his election in November, has called Japan’s alliance with the United States an “axis of Japan’s foreign and security policies,” even though Mr. Trump was vocal as a candidate in attacking Japanese trade practices and questioning American military support for the country. The mixed reaction reflected the global uncertainty about what a Trump presidency would look like — and the divided world into which he steps. A fractured landscape of self-interest — whether from rising nationalist movements in many European countries, an emboldened Russia or longstanding allies such as Britain or Japan — underscored the confused, and often contradictory, responses. He is, in some ways, a Rorschach test for a polarized world.
But in Berlin, where Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government has been rattled by anti-immigrant discontent before upcoming elections, Sigmar Gabriel, the vice chancellor, said there were “highly nationalist tones” in Mr. Trump’s speech, which he said reflected a “drastic radicalization” of United States politics. ”You have to take the man seriously,” Mr. Gabriel said. “Time to buckle your seatbelts and cross your fingers,” said Marcos Troyjo, a Brazilian economist and diplomat.
He said that if Mr. Trump made good on his pledges to rip up trade deals and disregard longstanding alliances, Germany stood ready to fill the void. For those hoping the president would sound different from the candidate, there was little comfort in his address.
“Should the United States start a trade war with China and all of Asia, then we as Europeans and Germans are fair partners,” Mr. Gabriel said. “Europe and Germany need a strategy geared toward Asia and China — and we have new opportunities.” In Germany, Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel warned of a “drastic radicalization” in American politics and said Berlin stood ready to fill the void left by an isolationist Washington. The only thing missing was a denunciation of Parliament as a “gossip chamber,” he added, using a term that fascists applied to German institutions in the 1920s. And in Britain, Prime Minister Theresa May said she would tell a skeptical Mr. Trump how important NATO and the European Union are for European and world stability.
President François Hollande of France, battling nationalist currents in his own country, did not wait for Mr. Trump to give his address before suggesting that France’s course would divert from Washington’s new direction. “With the threats we face, it’s not the time for less cooperation,” Mrs. May, who is supposed to travel to Washington soon, told The Financial Times.
“We are in an open world economy and it is not possible nor advisable to want to be isolated from the world economy,” he said. “We must not imagine France closed with respect to the rest of the world.” For a world confronting a tide of populist rage, his words both soothed and frightened. President François Hollande of France, battling nationalist currents in his own country, did not even wait for Mr. Trump to give his address before offering his take.
But the far-right French politician Marine Le Pen, a serious candidate to succeed Mr. Hollande in elections this spring, declared that Mr. Trump’s victory had opened “a new era in the cooperation between nations.” “We are in an open world economy, and it is not possible nor advisable to want to be isolated from the world economy,” he said.
Ms. Le Pen will join other far-right leaders from the Netherlands, Germany and Italy in the German city of Koblenz on Saturday, just a day after Mr. Trump’s inauguration, at a conference to consult and celebrate what they consider a popular shift in their direction. In Mexico, which Mr. Trump has made a whipping boy for the false promise of trade and the threat of migration, the response from President Enrique Peña Nieto, who plans to deliver his own address on foreign policy on Monday, was almost immediate. On Twitter, after a congratulatory note, he wrote: “Sovereignty, national interest and the protection of Mexicans will guide our relationship with the new government of the United States.”
In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte, whose bloody antidrug campaign has been criticized by the United States and other Western nations, welcomed the new president and his apparent willingness to stop telling other leaders how to govern. And an influential member of the president’s governing party, Manlio Fabio Beltrones, warned in an address after Mr. Trump’s Inaugural Address that “a weak and offended neighbor is not a good ally.”
“The Philippines welcomes President Trump’s foreign policy direction,” a spokesman for Mr. Duterte, Ernesto Abella, said in a statement. Referring to Mr. Trump’s statement that Americans would not “seek to impose our way of life on anyone,” Mr. Abella said that his approach “promises a more placid and mutually beneficial relationship, especially with longstanding allies like us.” Yet the response was not all bad.
There were the usual gestures of cooperation, mixed with hope that Mr. Trump’s angry and nationalistic words would not mean an American retreat from global responsibility. There were the usual gestures of cooperation, mixed with hope that Mr. Trump’s angry and nationalistic words would not mean an American retreat from global responsibility. There was also joy, whether among nationalist parties or global powers long at odds with the United States.
“With great power comes great responsibility,” Lithuania’s president, Dalia Grybauskaite, wrote on Twitter. “Confident in global leadership of the USA! Congratulations @realDonaldTrump!” Russia, where often vicious mockery of Barack Obama has for months been a state-sponsored national sport, responded with glee to Mr. Obama’s departure from office and the arrival of President Trump.
Other observers were struck by the dark tones of Mr. Trump’s speech. In Japan, Goro Hashimoto, a special editor at the right-leaning Yomiuri Shimbun, the world’s largest-circulation newspaper, compared Mr. Trump’s speech to President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address — and not favorably. The inauguration received blanket coverage on state media, with Rossiya 24, a round-the-clock television news channel, broadcasting the entire ceremony and Mr. Trump’s address live, along with scenes of anti-Trump demonstrators smashing shop windows in Washington.
Stirring particular delight among Russian politicians and commentators were Mr. Trump’s remarks in his inaugural address about the need “to unite the civilized world against radical Islam.” One of Russia’s biggest gripes against Mr. Obama was that he criticized President Vladimir V. Putin for supporting the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, a position that Moscow presented as tantamount to supporting terrorism.
In France, Ms. Le Pen, the National Front leader, lauded the British vote to leave the European Union and Mr. Trump’s victory. “In 2016, the Anglo-Saxon world woke up,” she said. She added: “In 2017, I am sure it will be the year of peoples across the continent rising up!”
Ms. Le Pen was to join other far-right leaders from Germany, Italy and the Netherlands in the German city of Koblenz on Saturday, just a day after Mr. Trump’s inauguration, at a conference to consult and celebrate what they consider a popular shift in their direction.
And in saying nothing, some world leaders seemed to embrace the new reality, seeking to accommodate a galvanizing political force whose message has been echoed in mass movements across continents.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, who was the first world leader to meet with Mr. Trump after his election in November, said nothing after Mr. Trump’s speech. But he has called Japan’s alliance with the United States an “axis of Japan’s foreign and security policies,” even though Mr. Trump was vocal as a candidate in attacking Japanese trade practices and questioning American military support for the country.
In China, which also offered no public response, the silence was notable for another reason.
It appeared to have been codified in an explicit directive. China Digital Times, an American-based website that tracks Chinese media and reports regularly on leaked orders from China’s propaganda apparatus, published a directive that forbade the country’s online news organizations to run photos of the inauguration or include it among their top five news stories of the day.
Notwithstanding a few aberrations, the words of analysts were less muted, freed from the constraints of political niceties and the obligation of world leaders to work with the new American president.
In Japan, Goro Hashimoto, a special editor at the right-leaning Yomiuri Shimbun, the world’s largest-circulation newspaper, compared Mr. Trump’s speech to President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address — and not favorably.
“When I heard Kennedy’s speech when I was a child, I was so excited,” Mr. Hashimoto said. “He talked about American values as well as the benefits for the world. Trump didn’t talk in that way.”“When I heard Kennedy’s speech when I was a child, I was so excited,” Mr. Hashimoto said. “He talked about American values as well as the benefits for the world. Trump didn’t talk in that way.”
Some European politicians were blunt. “Hostile inauguration speech,” the former Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt wrote on Twitter. “We can’t sit around & hope for US support & cooperation. Europe must take its destiny & security in its own hands.” Zhang Zhe, a Chinese student who is pursuing a doctorate in political science at Brown University in Rhode Island, watched Mr. Trump’s inauguration with his parents. The picture Mr. Trump presented of “American carnage,” he said in an email, did not register with the family.
Josef Joffe, the publisher and editor of Die Zeit, the German weekly, criticized Mr. Trump’s views on Germany, NATO and the European Union and wrote in the Guardian: “In the next four years, Trump can do impressive damage. The upside today is that the demagogues of the 1930s did not have to stand for re-election.” “My parents have only been in America for a few months and they don’t know much about it, but even they could not bear what Trump said,” Mr. Zhang wrote. “My father asked me, ‘This president, why does he describe the United States as a society that is worse off than China’s old feudal society?’”
The left-leaning Guardian itself compared Mr. Trump’s speech to a declaration of war in an editorial. “In 1933, Roosevelt challenged the world to overcome fear. In 2017, Mr. Trump told the world to be very afraid,” it said, adding that the speech’s “America First nationalism was crude and shameless.” The shift in policy left some determined to forge a path without the United States as the leader.
The columnist Matthew Parris, writing in The Times of London, called Mr. Trump “a turkey” and said that “a rather small person has made it to the highest office.” He warned British Conservatives, including the government, that “flirting” with Mr. Trump, despite promises of post-Brexit trade favors, could end badly, reminding them of the fate of another prime minister, Labour’s Tony Blair, after “our years of poodling to George W. Bush.” “We can’t sit around & hope for US support & cooperation,” the former Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt wrote on Twitter. “Europe must take its destiny & security in its own hands.”
In Beijing, Mr. Trump’s swearing-in took place at 1 a.m. Saturday local time, and well into the day, there was no official reaction to his inaugural address from a government whose statements are tightly scripted. Hours before the inauguration, a government spokeswoman had repeated standard boilerplate about the importance of bilateral relations between China and the United States. Still, amid the hand-wringing of establishment voices worried about a return to a less globalized world, there was a silver lining.
Relations “have had their ups and downs, but they have continued to move forward,” Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for China’s Foreign Ministry, told reporters. “China-U.S. relations should push forward from this new starting point to make greater progress.” “The upside today is that the demagogues of the 1930s did not have to stand for re-election,” wrote Josef Joffe, the publisher and editor of Die Zeit, the German weekly, wrote in the Guardian.
China’s official caution appears to have been codified in an explicit directive. China Digital Times, an American-based website that tracks Chinese media and regularly reports on leaked orders from China’s propaganda apparatus, published a directive that forbade the country’s online news organizations to run photos of the inauguration or include it among their top five news stories of the day.
Zhang Zhe, a Chinese student who is pursuing a doctorate in political science at Brown University in Rhode Island, watched Mr. Trump’s inauguration together with his parents. The picture Mr. Trump presented of “American carnage” did not register with the family, Mr. Zhang said in an email.
“My parents have only been in America for a few months and they don’t know much about it, but even they could not bear what Trump said,” Mr. Zhang wrote. “My father asked me, this president, ‘Why does he describe the United States as a society that is worse off than China’s old feudal society?’”
While China’s official reaction was muted, Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, was quick to offer her congratulations to Mr. Trump.
“Democracy is what ties Taiwan and the U.S. together,” Ms. Tsai tweeted within a minute of Mr. Trump’s swearing-in. “Look forward to advancing our friendship & partnership.”
Last month, Ms. Tsai called Mr. Trump to congratulate him on his victory, the first leader of Taiwan to directly communicate with a United States president or president-elect in decades. The United States does not have formal diplomatic ties to Taiwan, which China considers its own territory, and the phone call elicited strong criticism from Beijing.
Other leaders and politicians were also effusive. In Australia on Saturday, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull of Australia, whose government has banished refugees who tried to reach Australia by boat, took to Twitter to wish Mr. Trump “every success” and predicted “a great future ahead of us.” And in Brazil, an ultranationalist legislator, Jair Bolsonaro, expressed glee over the inauguration.
“Congratulations, new president of United States of America,” Mr. Bolsonaro, a conservative former army paratrooper who is preparing his own presidential bid in the 2018 election, said on Twitter.
But others in Brazil saw ominous signs for the future.
“We can root for the possibility that Trump is merely trying to bluff the world with his offensive rhetoric on trade and global elites,” said Marcos Troyjo, a Brazilian economist and diplomat who writes on international affairs for the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo. Still, Mr. Troyjo said that Mr. Trump’s first moves as president signaled that he was already creating a “stockpile of uncertainty and turbulence.”
“Time to buckle your seatbelts and cross your fingers,” Mr. Troyjo said.