Is Trump’s “America First” strategy starting to backfire as allies grow weary?

The U.S. appears increasingly isolated when it comes to its global geopolitical and trade ties as allies reassess their ties to the world’s largest economy and consider going it alone.

In the new year, a number of nations and power blocs have pressed ahead with realigning their relationships, closer trade ties and commercial partnerships, while pushing the more hostile and volatile United States into the background. This also includes China’s “preliminary agreement” with Canada and Approaching Great Britainas well as the agreements of the European Union India And South American countries.

These agreements and negotiations come after a year of U.S. President Donald Trump’s “America First” trade and foreign policy in his second term, during which the White House has slapped tariffs on friends and foes alike. and even territorial threatsas it asserts its economic and geopolitical dominance.

However, this strategy could backfire, especially as the US’s friends and partners seek to diversify their trade policies, not least to protect themselves from Trump’s unpredictability.

“Given what is happening with the US and its foreign policy, which was laid out in the recently released document National Security Strategy … The ‘Central Powers“They need to find their own agency and find other approaches,” Damian Ma, director of Carnegie China, an East Asia-based research center, told CNBC on Thursday.

“Countries will come together based on certain, specific à la carte interests rather than a broad, values-based alignment,” he said, pointing out that while this was not a return to the divided Cold War mentality of opposing power blocs, but rather a “recalibration” of national interests.

“Where this recalibration and this new balance ends is unclear, but you are seeing countries finally starting to take steps. Britain and Canada will not be the only ones,” he said, predicting a “flood of countries recalibrating their approach” to superpowers such as China and the United States

This realignment has certainly gained momentum recently, with a flurry of diplomatic and trade deals sought since the new year that have not involved either the U.S. or President Trump.

China has been particularly busy: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Irish Prime Minister Michael Martin, Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo and Starmer all visited Beijing this month.

China and Canada At the beginning of January, the USA agreed to reduce trade barriers an angry reply by Trump while British Prime Minister Keir Starmer was in Beijing Reset ties with President Xi Jinping, both sides agreed to reduce trade and travel barriers.

The EU has also been busy make progress in its trade agreement with Mercosur and signed a long-awaited free trade agreement with India last week.

These meetings came after Trump’s tirade against allies during his speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he insulted and criticized various leadersincluding French President Emmanuel Macron and Carney.

Jimena Blanco, principal analyst at risk intelligence firm Verisk Maplecroft, told CNBC that there has been a measurable deterioration in the way the US communicates with its allies.

“Our data measuring verbal tensions between countries shows that U.S. relations with some key allies have deteriorated over the past year,” she told CNBC on Thursday.

“The largest increases were seen with Canada, Denmark, Belgium, Japan, Ireland, New Zealand and France, reflecting the impact of public, tense exchanges between U.S. officials and their counterparts in allied countries.”

But Blanco noted that U.S. allies tended to respond to Washington’s policy changes by diversifying their economic engagement rather than reversing their integration into the global trading system.

“The EU, Canada, Japan, Australia and the UK cannot afford to decouple from the US, but are instead expanding trade with major emerging markets and with each other,” Blanco added, with emerging markets the “biggest winners” of this diversification.

Analysts see this period of rocky relations with the U.S. as more of a difficult period than a reason for divorce, saying U.S. allies have little choice but to try to keep the U.S. on their side while exploring other avenues of trade and cooperation.

“Europe is too dependent on the United States not only for its security but also technologically and economically to prefer a divorced life today,” Ivan Krastev, chairman of the Center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, Bulgaria, said in a Goldman Sachs report earlier this week.

“While there is a lot of talk for Europe about finding new allies, rapprochement with others will not be a quick or easy process,” he noted, adding: “Instead, Europe will focus on showing the US that Europe matters.”

Joseph Parkes, senior analyst at Verisk Maplecroft, agreed that the U.S. is ultimately too big to be isolated: “It’s just too important from a technology, trade, currency and security perspective,” he told CNBC on Thursday.

Still, in the long term, key allies will aim to rebalance their global relationships in strategic areas, he said.

“The nature of globalization will change. The fragmentation of trade will create new and diverse groupings of countries seeking to increase economic resilience,” he told CNBC on Thursday, with “geopolitical agility” becoming increasingly important for companies to navigate a more uncertain landscape.

“Recent volatility has accelerated the shift from ‘just-in-time’ to ‘just-in-case’ to strengthen supply chains,” he noted, with companies resorting to “nearshoring” and “friendshoring” to source materials from trusted allies.

In the meantime, Parkes said governments would look to “expand trade agreements to build strategic flexibility and reduce market and supply chain dependence on any particular country.”