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11:40 01.10.2026 •
US President Donald Trump addressing the 81st United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York City
Photo: Reuters
Donald Trump loves playing the tough guy. The president postured from the podium at the United Nations this week. He threatened to send the Iranian regime “into hell”; he gloated about his appropriation of Venezuelan oil, declaring, “to the victor belong the spoils.”
But the leader who visited Trump two days later, China’s Xi Jinping, was presumably unimpressed. Bravado notwithstanding, Trump finds himself in a stalemate with China — and confronting a cast of committed rivals that refuse to yield to US power, Bloomberg notes.
Xi fought Trump to a standstill in last year’s trade war. Beijing met a back-of-the-envelope US tariff onslaught with reciprocal duties and rare-earth export controls. China’s economy may be weak, but its coercive weapons are strong.
In the face of those threats, Trump has placed a prolonged pause on the tightening of US technological export controls and slowed American arms sales to Taiwan. Xi has positioned himself as Trump’s equal in a relationship of “constructive strategic stability.” He received elaborate displays of respect in Washington, including a personal welcome from Trump on the tarmac.
The buddy act won’t last forever: Below a superficially placid surface, competition churns. In addition to the trade war, the US and China are jostling for AI advantage and primacy in the western Pacific. Beijing is aiding Tehran – and effectively fighting a proxy war against America – as it clashes with Washington in the Middle East.
Trump’s aides argue that he is simply biding his time and preparing for renewed rivalry. Even so, we’ve entered an era in which an emboldened Chinese leadership tries to impose its own version of stability on the relationship with Washington — and refuses to be pushed around.
That’s indicative of a broader challenge. US allies are troubled by Trump’s disdain for key aspects of the American-built world order, and US adversaries aren’t sufficiently wowed by the strengths the president touts.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has rejected Trump’s push for peace in Ukraine. He believes he can impose a victor’s peace on Kyiv. Russia also brushed aside whatever warnings CIA director John Ratcliffe offered when he traveled to Moscow last month.
Iran, meanwhile, has been battered but remains unbowed. Tehran has responded to Trump’s economic siege strategy with military escalation. It has targeted shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and launched sophisticated missiles against US warships and bases in the region. Tehran and its allies have also expanded the geography of the confrontation, with attacks against Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline — the most crucial Hormuz workaround — and an assault by Yemen’s Houthis.
The Houthis, too, fought Trump to a stalemate in 2025: The US military badly bloodied that group but couldn’t break it. Trump opted to deescalate, through a deal in which the Houthis stopped attacks on US shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden but left other shipping vulnerable.
The problem isn’t that America is weak: Trump’s right that US capabilities are still unmatched.
Yet American power is overextended by simultaneous challenges in several theaters; it has been depleted in ill-planned trade wars and military fights; it has been compromised by continuing tensions with allies. Above all, US power is being resisted by a cohort of geopolitical revolutionaries who are bent on eroding America’s global influence and believe the momentum is on their side.
It’s one thing to project strength in Turtle Bay. But out on the frontiers of rivalry and conflict, US power doesn’t seem so imposing anymore.
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