Ein ungebundener Trump erweitert Xis Einflussbereich

*By hollowing out the rules-based order, the US president is pushing middle powers to hedge, and giving Beijing an opening it didn’t have before.*

*Daniel Ten Kate for Bloomberg News*

At the height of the pandemic in November 2021, seven people in surgical masks posed awkwardly next to a sign with lettering so small it was tough to read even in the photo that Taiwan triumphantly blasted around the world.

The humdrum opening of the Taiwanese Representative Office in Lithuania, one of the European Union’s smallest nations, belied the seismic impact it would have on two of the world’s biggest economic powers. As China restricted trade and investment flows to the former Soviet state for boosting ties with a territory claimed by Beijing, the European Union moved to pass a law that would allow a swift and forceful response to any economic coercion.

At the time, China was deemed the biggest bully in the room. The Biden White House had successfully rallied US allies to deny China advanced technology and hammer President Xi Jinping over economic coercion. Group of Seven leaders vowed in 2023 to stop any country from weaponizing economic dependencies to force others to “comply and conform.” Rahm Emanuel, then US envoy to Japan, even advocated for the “economic equivalent” of NATO.

“We can further isolate China by confronting Beijing’s economic tactics, the area in which its determination to dominate is most apparent,” Emanuel wrote in the Wall Street Journal in October 2024, just weeks before Donald Trump’s election victory. “It uses coercion, mercantilism and debt-trap diplomacy to crush competition and control countries.”

All of that now looks quaint, a time capsule of a bygone era. By even threatening to boost tariffs on allies to force Denmark to give up Greenland — on top of repeated strong-arm tactics against much of the world last year — Trump is swinging a sledgehammer at the rules-based order and alliance system that has underpinned American supremacy since World War II.

[Read the full essay here.](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-01-23/how-trump-s-pressure-on-nato-allies-is-boosting-china-s-global-influence?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc2OTE1ODAyNCwiZXhwIjoxNzY5NzYyODI0LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUOUFJUFZLSUpIOTQwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJEMzU0MUJFQjhBQUY0QkUwQkFBOUQzNkI3QjlCRjI4OCJ9.fxuOsoYHl0m2kMPEUGFqNRxQhvulascPglZ8KSRzpVA)