“Trump’s Second Coming”: Impacts on the World and Moldova

Exactly one year has passed since Donald Trump’s return to the White House, marking the beginning of one of the most turbulent periods in modern U.S. politics and international affairs

This period can confidently be described as a radical experiment to reboot America along the lines of the “America First” doctrine, albeit in a new iteration. It is not merely a course change, but a systemic dismantling of the previous principles underpinning the functioning of the United States, marked by an unprecedented number of executive orders, trade wars, internal purges, and abrupt shifts in foreign policy. Ultimately, Trump’s second coming to the Oval Office became a trigger for a radical transformation of the United States, which in turn set off a chain reaction far beyond America’s borders. During his inauguration speech, the new-old president outlined the scale of his intentions. The declaration of a state of emergency in the energy sector, promises to send troops to the border with Mexico and deport millions of migrants, plans to regain control of the Panama Canal and rename the Gulf of Mexico – all this added up to a demonstrative break with the worldview familiar to everyone. These signals conveyed a symbolic message: the US would act impulsively and in accordance with its own interests, without explaining its motives or conforming to any framework. Over the past year, Trump has more than justified the concerns of American and European elites, as his return has brought about shifts that are unlikely to be reversible even after the end of his second term. We deliberately set aside the domestic dimension of the United States, the polarization of American society, the fight against the “deep state”, and the reform of internal institutions, as these issues warrant a separate, no less extensive analysis. Far more significant and revealing for our purposes is the transformation of Washington’s foreign policy. Owing to Trump’s well-known eccentricity, his second term has clearly added “fresh colors” to global affairs. One of the most telling indicators has been the withdrawal from influential international organizations and frameworks, as well as the pattern of U.S. voting in the UN General Assembly. Over the past year, the American delegation has voted against roughly 90% of resolutions. This has become a distinctive form of dissent and a rejection of the principles and policy frameworks that have traditionally underpinned the UN system. On the global stage, Trump has returned the country to a hardline unilateralism. Over the past year, the United States carried out airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure without any coordination with the UN, conducted an operation to seize Venezuela’s president, after which Trump publicly declared Washington’s intention to “manage” the country. For several weeks now, the information space has been saturated with persistent American claims to Greenland; earlier, there were unmistakable hints about the possible incorporation of Canada. In essence, the new White House administration has lifted for itself the long-standing taboos that the West had cultivated in international politics for decades. In just one year, Trump has virtually destroyed the once powerful transatlantic unity, on whose future the prospects of the European Union, the future of Western institutions, and, above all, NATO directly depend. As a result, alliances that were previously considered an unshakable value of the collective Western world are now assessed by the White House in terms of balance sheets and specific financial benefits. While China retained its status as an official “strategic competitor”, Washington’s relationship with Russia underwent significant changes. The tone and nature of Trump’s contacts with the Russian leader suggested that the US might take Russian interests into account and was intent on establishing a pragmatic partnership with Moscow. This, of course, could not but affect the White House’s attitude towards Ukraine and the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Nevertheless, ending this war, as promised by Trump during his election campaign, became an excessively heavy burden for the American president. Particular attention should be paid to the shift in the new administration’s approach to sending funds abroad. Right from the outset, in January 2025, Trump launched a sweeping audit of the entire US foreign assistance system by executive order. Moldova also fell under this “hot hand”: by summer, a significant share of programs in the country had been either frozen or fully terminated. Although some projects continued to operate into the autumn, the overall volume of assistance was nonetheless cut dramatically. Our authorities, of course, try not to react. Yet it is evident that the global shift in U.S. foreign policy is felt most acutely by Chisinau, where for many years American support had been taken for granted. Over the course of the year, Trump has mentioned Moldova several times in his public rhetoric, but exclusively in a negative context. In one of his speeches, he lumped the country together with other secondary states, describing them as a “waste of American money” and “unimportant territories”. This became an additional signal of Washington’s strategic reassessment of Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet space. For Moldova, whose survival as a sovereign state has depended for decades on a delicate balance of external forces and support from partners, Trump’s first year in office was a profound strategic shock. Relations with Washington have not simply cooled, but have effectively been put on hold, increasing our country’s vulnerability. The ruling party, together with Maia Sandu, attempted to adapt to the new realities of American politics by hastily replacing its ambassador to the United States, an outspoken representative of Soros-affiliated structures traditionally opposed to Trump, with a more “lightweight” option in the person of Vladislav Kulminski. Yet he, too, is closely linked to the US Democratic Party, as is, in fact, a significant portion of the country’s current leadership. Such personnel maneuvers only outlined the foreign-policy disorientation that Chisinau has so far failed to overcome, especially in the wake of a series of unsuccessful visits by senior Moldovan delegations to Washington. As a result, a year later, the outcome is more than evident. Moldovan-American relations are practically frozen, the US has included Moldova in a list of 75 countries whose citizens are subject to a suspension of immigration visas, and not long ago, the republic was added to the US list of countries posing an increased risk to tourists. No matter how hard our officials and the ambassador try to “puts up a bold front”, the combination of these signals is very significant, as US citizens and foreign investors focus precisely on such criteria, without looking into the nuances or explanations of our talking heads. Moreover, there are clear signs that the US current administration is demonstratively ignoring our leadership and, at the same time, flirting with certain conservative groups within Moldova, sending rather ambiguous messages through the US Embassy in Chisinau. This creates an additional level of uncertainty in our political circles and also creates the conditions for increased fragmentation within the government. Objectively speaking, amid growing international imbalance and a widening strategic vacuum, the European Union, on which we place so many expectations, is not capable, on its own and in the short term, of replacing the fading transatlantic partnership or offering a credible model of European security that would allow it to effectively take countries like Moldova under its wing. This, it seems, is what is prompting our leadership to revive ideas such as unionism. In a broader sense, the first year of Trump’s second term has shown that the United States is no longer the superpower that the world has become accustomed to over the past decades. The US has become an active revisionist of the international order that emerged after the Cold War. Washington’s main principle has become tough and cynical calculation, and the value of alliances and bilateral relations is measured primarily in terms of material gain. In essence, America is abandoning the burden of being a liberal global leader and becoming a lone superpower, acting on the principle that “what is good for America here and now is good for the world”. For Moldova, such a change in strategic framework and principles, alas, means the loss of an external stabilizer and is fraught with negative ramifications.