Europe views the US with ‘much less horror’ after Trump’s midterm defeat

A sigh of relief in Brussels, nine days after the vote

Nine days after Americans voted in the midterm elections, the verdict from Europe is relief; guarded, qualified, and already giving way to worry about what comes next. The Democratic Party swept both chambers of Congress in the 3 November vote, welcomed by European leaders, called a reprieve rather than a reversal by analysts.

In an analysis published on Thursday, Al Jazeera reported that Europeans are looking at the United States with ‘much less horror’ than they have in the past two years; the words of Erik Jones, director of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute. Jones added the caution that matters most: Europeans ‘should not exaggerate the significance in terms of transatlantic relations’.

The relief is real. The reset is not. The full results of the midterms show the scale of the Democratic victory; but the answers from Brussels, Berlin and Paris suggest the relationship has moved further than one election can move it back.

What the record shows about the result and the reaction

In the midterm elections on Tuesday 3 November, the Democrats regained control of the House of Representatives and the Senate, as well as several governorships, China Daily reported from Brussels. In the Senate the party now holds at least 55 seats, with the Alaska race still outstanding; a cushion completed in part by Scott Colom’s historic win in Mississippi, where the Democrat defeated the Republican incumbent by 4,585 votes.

The first reactions from European capitals were warm. Norway’s prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, described the result as a powerful signal that American voters wanted a different direction. German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius congratulated the Democrats on a ‘historic victory’. Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, wrote that Americans had voted ‘against hate, against machismo, against climate denialism and against the privileges of the elites’.

Others struck a cooler note. France’s foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, said the result did not alter the ‘urgent and vital necessity’ of building a stronger Europe. Austria’s foreign minister, Beate Meinl-Reisinger, was blunter: Europe’s security and prosperity ‘must not depend on how people in Kansas or Iowa vote’.

Two hard facts frame the caution. The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said this week that the war in Iran has led the EU to import €127 billion in additional fossil fuels. And the Pentagon is expected to complete its review of American military forces in Europe next month, with five NATO diplomats telling Politico a weakened Trump could withdraw thousands more troops.

What is still unknown about the next two years?

Almost everything that would turn relief into a reset remains undecided. It is not known whether a president weakened at home will become more dangerous abroad, as several analysts warn, or more constrained by a hostile Congress. The scale of any American troop reduction in Europe is unknown until the Pentagon review lands in December.

It is not known whether the new Democratic Congress will use the next government funding bill to block money for the war in Iran, or force larger aid for Kyiv before it takes office in January. On trade, it is not known whether American courts will strike down some of Trump’s tariffs; and even if they do, the trade agreement between Washington and Brussels would need renegotiation, which the US administration will not initiate in the next two years.

Relief that changes little, and a clock that keeps running

This result matters because it tests a comforting idea: that the damage to the transatlantic alliance is one man’s doing, and that an election can undo it. The evidence points the other way. The drift began before Trump, under Barack Obama, whose administration started a strategic reorientation towards Asia; now a rare area of agreement across the American political divide.

That is why the celebrations were so short. A Democratic Congress will have more power over spending, legislation and oversight to challenge some of Trump’s decisions, but the president retains considerable authority over foreign policy. On Ukraine, Iran and tariffs, as the economist Fredrik Erixon put it, ‘there is still a lot of space for the president to behave in the same fashion as in past years’.

The stakes are concrete. Energy prices driven up by the war in Iran feed cost-of-living anger, and Europe’s defence depends on American decisions a midterm result does not settle. Jones leaves Europe one question: what should Europe do with the time this election has bought it? His answer is blunt; repairing the old relationship would be time wasted. Europe should prepare for when the United States cares even less.

The drift that no midterm can reverse

This election changes the arithmetic of American power more than its direction. Geopolitically, the pivot to Asia that began under Obama has survived three presidents because it rests on a bipartisan reading of where the threats sit, not on one president’s temperament. A Democratic Congress can slow a president; it cannot rewind a decade of strategic reorientation.

Economically, the levers that hurt Europe most sit in the president’s hands. Trump’s tariffs rely on executive authority rather than congressional approval, so Democrats can intensify oversight but cannot unilaterally dismantle them. Even if courts strike some tariffs down, the EU-US trade agreement would need renegotiation. In security, the speed cap that returned over Ukraine’s Starshield network shows how quickly American-controlled technology can become leverage over an ally.

The election was fought and won on prices, not on foreign policy; a ‘rejection of the price at the pump’. Historically, the post-war bargain assumed Washington needed a free, prosperous and secure Europe; that assumption has eroded on both sides of the Atlantic. The midterm result is best read as a pause in a longer story, not a new chapter.

A weakened president, a waiting Congress, and a December deadline

The second-order effects run in three directions. First, a president with less room at home may reach for foreign policy, where he has the most freedom. Analysts warn that lame-duck presidents in their final two years shift focus abroad, and this administration has ‘a radical approach to the world’. Europe could face a more aggressive Trump, not a chastened one.

Second, the calendar works against Kyiv. The new Congress does not take office until January, leaving a two-month window in which Ukrainian officials fear Trump could pursue further talks with Putin. The European force holding its first Ukraine support meeting shows the continent is already organising as if American help may thin out.

Third, the economics cut both ways. A president with less room at home might resort to tariffs ‘more than before’ as an instrument of foreign policy, while the war in Iran keeps energy prices high and Europe’s winter gas reserves low. The Democrats are likely to invest more energy in social services and economic conditions at home than in repairing alliances abroad.

What happens next in Brussels and Washington?

The calendar now decides. The Pentagon’s force-posture review is due by December, and its numbers will tell Europe how many American troops are leaving, and how fast. In January, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, has said foreign ministers will hold a ‘deep dive’ on new measures, and the new Congress will be sworn in. The Alaska race will fix the final balance of the chamber.

Before then, the test is whether the Democrats attach conditions to the next government funding bill, blocking money for the war in Iran, or forcing larger aid for Ukraine, and whether Trump answers with a deal on Ukraine negotiated in Abu Dhabi that leaves Europe watching from outside. Michele Valensise put the European demand plainly: Europeans must be involved in the contacts aimed at ending the war Russia launched against Ukraine.