America’s allies are figuring out Donald Trump

ONE question about Donald Trump obsesses foreign governments more than any other: will this president, who campaigned as an “America First” insurgent, continue to trample norms in office? Strikingly often, foes and friends answer this in different ways.

Such hostile or rival powers as China, Russia or Iran increasingly find that Mr Trump’s policies resemble those pursued by his predecessors. Candidate Trump called China a trade cheat, bent on “rape” of the American economy. President Trump now calls that country’s leader, Xi Jinping, a “highly respected” and indispensable partner in efforts to curb North Korea’s nuclear ambitions—a position not far from that adopted by Barack Obama, and George W. Bush before him. Trump aides no longer talk about a grand bargain with Russia, offering President Vladimir Putin a free hand in Ukraine in exchange for iron-fisted support in the fight against Islamic State: a loud advocate for such a deal, Michael Flynn, the president’s first national security adviser, was fired for lying about contacts with Russian envoys. Nor has Mr Trump torn up an Obama-era deal to freeze Iran’s nuclear programme, although he calls it a “disaster”. Instead he seems minded to buttress it with sanctions targeting Iranian misconduct in other fields: a policy that Hillary Clinton favoured.